“Andrew McIntosh's “I Hold the Lion's Paw", a 40-minute suite, travels over vast geography, searching, sometimes with a little swing in its step."
Tom Huizenga, NPR (Top 10 Classical Albums of 2017: LA Percussion Quartet's Beyond)
“At Green Umbrella shows, you are as likely to encounter the molten avant-gardism of Chaya Czernowin or the desert-tinged soundscapes of Andrew McIntosh as you are an audience-friendly post-minimalist."
Alex Ross, The New Yorker (article about the LA Philharmonic)
“a phenomenal work of shifting colors and evolving textures that revels in the process of gradually revealing itself over time."
Andy Jurik, Pop Matters (I Hold the Lion's Paw on LAPQ's album, Beyond)
“Andrew McIntosh, a thirty-year-old composer and a Baroque violinist who grew up in a small town on the edge of the Nevada desert, is one of a number of L.A. musicians who pay heed to the twentieth-century avant-garde, resisting stereotypes of the city as a domain of movie-score bombast. McIntosh co-owns a new-music label with the ironic name Populist Records; his first solo album is titled “Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure.” He was assigned a crucial pair of scenes in which Lucha and Jameson consummate their love and are married. In other hands, this material might have elicited lyrical effusions; McIntosh’s spare, rarefied sonorities, which tilt away from traditional tunings, give an air of mythic otherness. His music for a quartet of saxophones has been wafting out from Angel’s Point, in Elysian Park, and settling over the city like an invisible mist."
Alex Ross, The New Yorker (Hopscotch opera)
“There was an underlying joy to the neatness of it all, a clear intellect simply cherishing harmony."
Daniel S. G. Wood, Stage and Cinema (Shasta at the LA Philharmonic)
“Meanwhile, wild Up violinist Andrew McIntosh has just released a CD, “Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure,” of his recent chamber pieces on the L.A. label Populist Records. An explorer into the cracks of intonation and the quirks of symmetry, McIntosh starts seemingly predictable processes, but the predictability becomes invariably hijacked by the piling up of wonderful small accidents of acoustical resonance into lavish cascades of colorful sound.”
Mark Swed, L.A. Times (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“The sheer opulence of the sound here – quite, quite beautiful – is an oceanic indulgence in the context of what elsewhere can be a precise and reserved disc, but it shows McIntosh to be a composer of great aural as well as procedural imagination. Highly recommended.”
Tim Rutherford-Johnson, The Rambler (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“A new release on Populist Records by California-based violinist, violist, baroque violin- ist and composer Andrew McIntosh, is a shining example of the extraordinary music that the youngest generation of American experimentalists has to offer... ... Expertly performed by Brooklyn-based ensemble Yarn/ Wire, this work [Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure] makes use of equal-tempered pianos (alongside nine justly tuned aluminium pipes) to a magnificent effect... ...The other work on this album, Symmetry Etudes for violin and two clarinets, is a collection of eight beautifully simple and self-contained etudes. Etude II, for example, is a stunning, elegiac canon (in diminution and augmentation) built on the intervals of the Pythagorean perfect fifth and major second. The most striking of etudes is perhaps the fourth, a 10- minute work purely of rising and falling arpeggios based on pitches from two or three closely related harmonic spectra. By gradually and systematically off-setting the arpeggios, the piece transforms into a vast, expansive landscape that transcends its evocatively simple experimental underpinnings.”
William Dougherty, TEMPO (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“McIntosh's score with soaring vocal lines, sumptuously sung by soprano Estelí Gomez, stands out as a splendid opus that could easily be excerpted for concerts."
Alexandra Ivanoff, Today's Zaman (Hopscotch opera)
“Andrew McIntosh's debut is undoubtedly one of the most interesting recent releases when it comes to young composers... ...In the end, this is a challenging album, one that, like all good works of art, presents the possibility of inexhaustible interpretations and analysis, one which deserves to be a part of that elusive history of composing that prefers to speak from the margins. It doesn’t need the spotlight so often sought by other artists of the same generation, or the connections easily made to the memory of a big, fashionable (in a non-pejorative sense) movement – it only needs to be heard and thought about, well and long."
David Murrieta, A Closer Listen (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“Andrew McIntosh speaks slightly. So does his music. It doesn't want that forward motion of tuneful stuff but slips quietly into the skull, almost imperceptible. Before you catch yourself listening, body and bone are bathed in waves of sound-pattern. It happens like the swoosh and whirl of ocean, so present it recedes into background where it empties the spine's tension and the mind's. There's an elemental calm about all these constants: the constant sizzle of partials, the constant undulation of lines, the constant openness of textural space. It's just that it fills you with so much nothing, and when you're filled with nothing well there's nothing to think about. All you can do is just listen. So just listen."
Damjan Rakonjac, The Artificialist (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“One of the most enjoyable things I've heard this year."
Brian Olewnick, Just Outside (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“Each opens the door onto a magical microcosm, inviting the listener to participate in the discovery... ...The production is meticulous, the soundscapes rich and immersive."
Giacomo Fiore, San Francisco Classical Voice (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“But McIntosh’s “Yelling Into the Wind” broke the sound barrier – in terms of going beyond what we have known – for coming up with a new tonal language for a magical work in which every moment is fascinating. Its gorgeous, shape- shifting panes of color and light create a psychologically potent yet exquisitely balanced work of art. wild Up’s beautifully nuanced performance, which featured Richard Valitutto as solo pianist, deserves lavish accolades - as does this astounding opus.”
Alexandra Ivanoff, www.bachtrack.com (Yelling Into the Wind)
“Though few in number and playing quietly, the solitary chords produced by this ensemble floated gently upward into the expanse of Disney Hall, creating a lovely warm sound. Silence between the chords and scales helped to focus the listening. The muted trumpet, embedded in this lush texture, sounded at times like Miles Davis and the blend of brass and strings was elegantly smooth.”
Paul Muller, Sequenza 21 (Silver and White)
“The performance [of the US premiere of Gérard Grisey's “Les Espaces Acoustiques"], expertly conducted by Mark Menzies, was enrapturing. Andrew McIntosh played the important viola solos with commanding beauty.”
Mark Swed, L.A. Times (Grisey festival at REDCAT)
“His [pianist Dante Boon's] sensitive playing set the stage for the violin and here Andrew McIntosh displayed amazing control of pitch and intonation, even when the sounds coming from his instrument were barely above a whisper. Despite the fragmented nature of the piece - and its 75 minute length - it was never boring. This was due largely to the quality of the playing but also the fact that it was performed live in a space where the finest details were audible... ...This was an excellent performance of one of the landmarks of late 20th century experimental music."
Paul Muller, Sequenza 21 (Feldman's For John Cage at Dogstar)
“The performance was exceptional. Every pitch, every sound, had a considered, tactile beauty, as if it had been lovingly worked on and perfected." Mark Swed, L.A. Times (Klaus Lang's einfalt.stille. at Monday Evening Concerts)
“Three string players from wild Up [Andrew Tholl, Andrew McIntosh, and Ashley Walters] provided a knockout performance of Greek composer Xenakis' harshly expressive, hard sawing trio, “Ikhoor."
Mark Swed, L.A. Times (Wild Up at Monday Evening Concerts)
“Clearly invested in the material, they’ve risked emotional drain in order to infuse it with blood and fire."
Richard Allen, A Closer Listen (Formalist Quartet recording of Nicholas Deyoe's for ever day is another view of the tentative past)
Tom Huizenga, NPR (Top 10 Classical Albums of 2017: LA Percussion Quartet's Beyond)
“At Green Umbrella shows, you are as likely to encounter the molten avant-gardism of Chaya Czernowin or the desert-tinged soundscapes of Andrew McIntosh as you are an audience-friendly post-minimalist."
Alex Ross, The New Yorker (article about the LA Philharmonic)
“a phenomenal work of shifting colors and evolving textures that revels in the process of gradually revealing itself over time."
Andy Jurik, Pop Matters (I Hold the Lion's Paw on LAPQ's album, Beyond)
“Andrew McIntosh, a thirty-year-old composer and a Baroque violinist who grew up in a small town on the edge of the Nevada desert, is one of a number of L.A. musicians who pay heed to the twentieth-century avant-garde, resisting stereotypes of the city as a domain of movie-score bombast. McIntosh co-owns a new-music label with the ironic name Populist Records; his first solo album is titled “Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure.” He was assigned a crucial pair of scenes in which Lucha and Jameson consummate their love and are married. In other hands, this material might have elicited lyrical effusions; McIntosh’s spare, rarefied sonorities, which tilt away from traditional tunings, give an air of mythic otherness. His music for a quartet of saxophones has been wafting out from Angel’s Point, in Elysian Park, and settling over the city like an invisible mist."
Alex Ross, The New Yorker (Hopscotch opera)
“There was an underlying joy to the neatness of it all, a clear intellect simply cherishing harmony."
Daniel S. G. Wood, Stage and Cinema (Shasta at the LA Philharmonic)
“Meanwhile, wild Up violinist Andrew McIntosh has just released a CD, “Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure,” of his recent chamber pieces on the L.A. label Populist Records. An explorer into the cracks of intonation and the quirks of symmetry, McIntosh starts seemingly predictable processes, but the predictability becomes invariably hijacked by the piling up of wonderful small accidents of acoustical resonance into lavish cascades of colorful sound.”
Mark Swed, L.A. Times (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“The sheer opulence of the sound here – quite, quite beautiful – is an oceanic indulgence in the context of what elsewhere can be a precise and reserved disc, but it shows McIntosh to be a composer of great aural as well as procedural imagination. Highly recommended.”
Tim Rutherford-Johnson, The Rambler (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“A new release on Populist Records by California-based violinist, violist, baroque violin- ist and composer Andrew McIntosh, is a shining example of the extraordinary music that the youngest generation of American experimentalists has to offer... ... Expertly performed by Brooklyn-based ensemble Yarn/ Wire, this work [Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure] makes use of equal-tempered pianos (alongside nine justly tuned aluminium pipes) to a magnificent effect... ...The other work on this album, Symmetry Etudes for violin and two clarinets, is a collection of eight beautifully simple and self-contained etudes. Etude II, for example, is a stunning, elegiac canon (in diminution and augmentation) built on the intervals of the Pythagorean perfect fifth and major second. The most striking of etudes is perhaps the fourth, a 10- minute work purely of rising and falling arpeggios based on pitches from two or three closely related harmonic spectra. By gradually and systematically off-setting the arpeggios, the piece transforms into a vast, expansive landscape that transcends its evocatively simple experimental underpinnings.”
William Dougherty, TEMPO (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“McIntosh's score with soaring vocal lines, sumptuously sung by soprano Estelí Gomez, stands out as a splendid opus that could easily be excerpted for concerts."
Alexandra Ivanoff, Today's Zaman (Hopscotch opera)
“Andrew McIntosh's debut is undoubtedly one of the most interesting recent releases when it comes to young composers... ...In the end, this is a challenging album, one that, like all good works of art, presents the possibility of inexhaustible interpretations and analysis, one which deserves to be a part of that elusive history of composing that prefers to speak from the margins. It doesn’t need the spotlight so often sought by other artists of the same generation, or the connections easily made to the memory of a big, fashionable (in a non-pejorative sense) movement – it only needs to be heard and thought about, well and long."
David Murrieta, A Closer Listen (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“Andrew McIntosh speaks slightly. So does his music. It doesn't want that forward motion of tuneful stuff but slips quietly into the skull, almost imperceptible. Before you catch yourself listening, body and bone are bathed in waves of sound-pattern. It happens like the swoosh and whirl of ocean, so present it recedes into background where it empties the spine's tension and the mind's. There's an elemental calm about all these constants: the constant sizzle of partials, the constant undulation of lines, the constant openness of textural space. It's just that it fills you with so much nothing, and when you're filled with nothing well there's nothing to think about. All you can do is just listen. So just listen."
Damjan Rakonjac, The Artificialist (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“One of the most enjoyable things I've heard this year."
Brian Olewnick, Just Outside (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“Each opens the door onto a magical microcosm, inviting the listener to participate in the discovery... ...The production is meticulous, the soundscapes rich and immersive."
Giacomo Fiore, San Francisco Classical Voice (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
“But McIntosh’s “Yelling Into the Wind” broke the sound barrier – in terms of going beyond what we have known – for coming up with a new tonal language for a magical work in which every moment is fascinating. Its gorgeous, shape- shifting panes of color and light create a psychologically potent yet exquisitely balanced work of art. wild Up’s beautifully nuanced performance, which featured Richard Valitutto as solo pianist, deserves lavish accolades - as does this astounding opus.”
Alexandra Ivanoff, www.bachtrack.com (Yelling Into the Wind)
“Though few in number and playing quietly, the solitary chords produced by this ensemble floated gently upward into the expanse of Disney Hall, creating a lovely warm sound. Silence between the chords and scales helped to focus the listening. The muted trumpet, embedded in this lush texture, sounded at times like Miles Davis and the blend of brass and strings was elegantly smooth.”
Paul Muller, Sequenza 21 (Silver and White)
“The performance [of the US premiere of Gérard Grisey's “Les Espaces Acoustiques"], expertly conducted by Mark Menzies, was enrapturing. Andrew McIntosh played the important viola solos with commanding beauty.”
Mark Swed, L.A. Times (Grisey festival at REDCAT)
“His [pianist Dante Boon's] sensitive playing set the stage for the violin and here Andrew McIntosh displayed amazing control of pitch and intonation, even when the sounds coming from his instrument were barely above a whisper. Despite the fragmented nature of the piece - and its 75 minute length - it was never boring. This was due largely to the quality of the playing but also the fact that it was performed live in a space where the finest details were audible... ...This was an excellent performance of one of the landmarks of late 20th century experimental music."
Paul Muller, Sequenza 21 (Feldman's For John Cage at Dogstar)
“The performance was exceptional. Every pitch, every sound, had a considered, tactile beauty, as if it had been lovingly worked on and perfected." Mark Swed, L.A. Times (Klaus Lang's einfalt.stille. at Monday Evening Concerts)
“Three string players from wild Up [Andrew Tholl, Andrew McIntosh, and Ashley Walters] provided a knockout performance of Greek composer Xenakis' harshly expressive, hard sawing trio, “Ikhoor."
Mark Swed, L.A. Times (Wild Up at Monday Evening Concerts)
“Clearly invested in the material, they’ve risked emotional drain in order to infuse it with blood and fire."
Richard Allen, A Closer Listen (Formalist Quartet recording of Nicholas Deyoe's for ever day is another view of the tentative past)