NOTEWORTHY
“softly shattering” – NY Times
“Watching Birds at the End of the World” invites listeners to value sound as an opening into experiential bliss. — OperaWire
“His music crates an oasis of calm, tranquility and color.” — Opera News
“[The Songs of Watching Birds] were short and elegant, wonderfully uncluttered, bringing the vocal works of Ives and Messiaen, or even Purcell, to mind.” — BachTrack
“spinning out fluttering textures of interlocked voices, [Siegel’s] music had an elevated subtlety, as weighty and solemn as polished stones, but quivering always with the pulse of life.” — The Log Journal
INTERVIEWS
Interview at All Arts about Watching Birds at the End of the World
Audio Interview with the Trilloquoy Podcast
Audio Interview as part of the Ten Thousand Hours Podcast
Interview for Roulette Intermedium
Interview for Composition Today
SELECTED REVIEWS
“Brooklyn composer Aaron Siegel frees ambient music from its dour, eerie reputation with [Science is Only a Sometimes Friend, an] atmospheric work for eight constantly ringing glockenspiels and organ, which taps into a joyful flow of energy reminiscent of Terry Riley’s.”
– TimeOut New York
link to article
“For those looking for an hour-long respite from the bitter cold and straining grind steadfastly lurking outside the four walls of your bedroom, allow composer Aaron Siegel’s Science Is Only A Sometimes Friend to send you drifting, swaddled in a blissful stupor, into that hazy, temperate zone somewhere between the clouds and the sun.”
– Matthew Walker, Free Music Archive
link to article
“A core ensemble played [Science Is Only a Sometimes Friend], and toy glockenspiels were distributed to the crowd, which had its own instructions: Siegel’s associates held up cue cards to indicate when we should move from one note to another. Several small children chose to depart from the score and improvise freely, their cadenzas giving a jazzy flavor to the hazy, hypnotic clouds of chiming tones.”
– Alex Ross, The New Yorker
link to article
“There are 8 million stories in the naked city – and at least two dozen glockenspiels. The tinkling tones of more than 20 glockenspiels drifted over Central Park’s East Meadow in one of nearly 900 musical performances across the city on Sunday organized by Make Music New York. Composer Aaron Siegel led the group and assistants held up cue cards showing the notes to strike so members of the audience could play along on the unusual instruments, which resemble xylophones.”
– The Daily News
link to article
“An evocative composer”
– Allan Kozinn, New York Times
“[Fiddle and Drum] is an earthy, highly sensitive release that instantly brings to mind a lost improv classic, 1975’s Swift Are the Winds of Life, by the duo of the late violinist Leroy Jenkins and drummer Rashied Ali.”
– Hank Shteamer, Time Out New York
link to article
“[Siegel] is an improviser with a strong jazz background, but in a solo improv setting tends to throw all idiomatic reference out the window and head for the frontiers of sound research.”
– Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
“[The Cabinet] is an exquisite set that has a meditative ease and grace, like some Korean court ritual.”
– Brian Morton, The Wire
“Siegel exercises unusual creativity, ranging from rattle to roar, from dense, comples music to measured periods of intense concentration on a single sound source….[The Cabinet] is a continually arresting, meditative work in which Siegel’s discourses on material seem to converge, illuminating the listener’s environment.”
– Stuart Broomer, Signal to Noise
“Siegel runs the out-music gamut, comfortable in contemporary freeish jazz or the most abstract experimental music around.”
– Bret McCabe, Baltimore Weekly
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