Selected reviews of Hopscotch
“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
“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
Press for 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“One of the most enjoyable things I've heard this year."
Brian Olewnick, Just Outside
“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
Selected reviews of other works
“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
“That juxtaposition — of peacefulness and pummeling — was also a feature of Andrew McIntosh’s piano concerto “Yelling Into the Wind,” which ended with a passage of harsh chords before a final suave fragment from the soloist (Richard Valitutto).”
Zachary Woolfe, NY Times
“The Los Angeles-based orchestra collective, wildUp, who performed the first of two concerts on Oct. 20 at Roulette in Brooklyn, win the prize for the most fearlessly inventive. Conducted by Christopher Rountree, their program of nine pieces revealed a uniquely gifted composer: Andrew McIntosh. His “Yelling into the Wind” was a masterpiece of fascinating elements: a psychologically potent tonal vocabulary and an orchestration studded with delicate use of percussion and a solo piano part that covered a wide stylistic radius."
Alexandra Ivanoff, Today's Zaman
“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
"After intermission, Andrew McIntosh’s Etude IV seemed to strip music down even further to its barest components. Arranged for two clarinets (James Sullivan and Brian Walsh) and violin (Mark Menzies), the piece consisted of slowly shifting patterns of just intonation intervals. The unadorned austerity of this piece made it challenging for some concertgoers, but I found it riveting after losing myself in the pattern of subtle harmonic changes."
Isaac Shankler, New Music Box
Selected reviews of solo and chamber performances
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Simplicity, complexity, and humor were recurring themes for the evening. When listening to one of Johnson’s pieces, it may initially seem almost bewilderingly simple. Sometimes, gradually, a deeper structure becomes clear, and a slow-motion moment can feel like a revelation. At other times, the pattern remains tantalizingly, maddeningly just out of reach. The curious thing about this scenario is that while the pattern is still perceptible, it is “felt” rather than understood. This was certainly the case for me when hearing the the sparse, disjunct falling gestures of Tilework for Viola, performed with precision and subtlety by Andrew McIntosh."
Isaac Schankler, New Music Box
“I just prefer McIntosh’s version, if only because I’m a sucker for that hoe-down-y fiddle sound, which tethers Johnson’s mathematical abstractions, if only loosely, to a recognisable tradition."
Tim Rutherford-Johnson, The Rambler
“Freeman was right at home in John Cage’s avant-garde New York School circle, and two of his solo violin “Freeman Etudes” (which Freeman never tired of pointing out she hadn’t commissioned) were impressively played by two young violinists named Andrew (Tholl and McIntosh).”
Mark Swed, L.A. Times
Selected Formalist Quartet reviews
“Clearly invested in the material, they’ve risked emotional drain in order to infuse it with blood and fire."
Richard Allen, A Closer Listen
“one of Los Angeles’ most exciting chamber ensembles... ...a lusty swirling performance... ...McIntosh presented the appropriately named Two Small Quartets. Both ended too quickly and were studies in contrast with the first being softly played and nearly absent sounding with the other revolving around long-held tones passed between the players... ...The players easily shifted between the ribald and the lyrical with well coordinated, superb playing from all corners. The sound was precise and intuitive at the same time, which made for a wonderful evening overall." Brian Holt, Out West Arts
“Two entirely acoustic string quartets by Ishmael Leo Smith, played with great discipline and conviction by the Formalist Quartet, offered another flavor at the new music assortment."
Kenneth Herman, San Diego.com
“At the other end of history came the world premiere of Rozalie Hirs’ engrossing string quartet, “Zenit,” played by the superb new L.A.-based Formalist Quartet.”
- Mark Swed, L.A. Times
“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
“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
Press for 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“One of the most enjoyable things I've heard this year."
Brian Olewnick, Just Outside
“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
Selected reviews of other works
“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
“That juxtaposition — of peacefulness and pummeling — was also a feature of Andrew McIntosh’s piano concerto “Yelling Into the Wind,” which ended with a passage of harsh chords before a final suave fragment from the soloist (Richard Valitutto).”
Zachary Woolfe, NY Times
“The Los Angeles-based orchestra collective, wildUp, who performed the first of two concerts on Oct. 20 at Roulette in Brooklyn, win the prize for the most fearlessly inventive. Conducted by Christopher Rountree, their program of nine pieces revealed a uniquely gifted composer: Andrew McIntosh. His “Yelling into the Wind” was a masterpiece of fascinating elements: a psychologically potent tonal vocabulary and an orchestration studded with delicate use of percussion and a solo piano part that covered a wide stylistic radius."
Alexandra Ivanoff, Today's Zaman
“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
"After intermission, Andrew McIntosh’s Etude IV seemed to strip music down even further to its barest components. Arranged for two clarinets (James Sullivan and Brian Walsh) and violin (Mark Menzies), the piece consisted of slowly shifting patterns of just intonation intervals. The unadorned austerity of this piece made it challenging for some concertgoers, but I found it riveting after losing myself in the pattern of subtle harmonic changes."
Isaac Shankler, New Music Box
Selected reviews of solo and chamber performances
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Simplicity, complexity, and humor were recurring themes for the evening. When listening to one of Johnson’s pieces, it may initially seem almost bewilderingly simple. Sometimes, gradually, a deeper structure becomes clear, and a slow-motion moment can feel like a revelation. At other times, the pattern remains tantalizingly, maddeningly just out of reach. The curious thing about this scenario is that while the pattern is still perceptible, it is “felt” rather than understood. This was certainly the case for me when hearing the the sparse, disjunct falling gestures of Tilework for Viola, performed with precision and subtlety by Andrew McIntosh."
Isaac Schankler, New Music Box
“I just prefer McIntosh’s version, if only because I’m a sucker for that hoe-down-y fiddle sound, which tethers Johnson’s mathematical abstractions, if only loosely, to a recognisable tradition."
Tim Rutherford-Johnson, The Rambler
“Freeman was right at home in John Cage’s avant-garde New York School circle, and two of his solo violin “Freeman Etudes” (which Freeman never tired of pointing out she hadn’t commissioned) were impressively played by two young violinists named Andrew (Tholl and McIntosh).”
Mark Swed, L.A. Times
Selected Formalist Quartet reviews
“Clearly invested in the material, they’ve risked emotional drain in order to infuse it with blood and fire."
Richard Allen, A Closer Listen
“one of Los Angeles’ most exciting chamber ensembles... ...a lusty swirling performance... ...McIntosh presented the appropriately named Two Small Quartets. Both ended too quickly and were studies in contrast with the first being softly played and nearly absent sounding with the other revolving around long-held tones passed between the players... ...The players easily shifted between the ribald and the lyrical with well coordinated, superb playing from all corners. The sound was precise and intuitive at the same time, which made for a wonderful evening overall." Brian Holt, Out West Arts
“Two entirely acoustic string quartets by Ishmael Leo Smith, played with great discipline and conviction by the Formalist Quartet, offered another flavor at the new music assortment."
Kenneth Herman, San Diego.com
“At the other end of history came the world premiere of Rozalie Hirs’ engrossing string quartet, “Zenit,” played by the superb new L.A.-based Formalist Quartet.”
- Mark Swed, L.A. Times