Pitchfork
“As a meditation on a place that McIntosh loves, Little Jimmy is a quiet love letter to the ever-evolving reality of life on Earth."
Vanessa Ague (review of Little Jimmy album)
The New Yorker
“Moonbeam” bears the imprint of a composer preternaturally attuned to the landscapes and soundscapes of the West. ...In “Moonbeam,” the field recordings serve as the sonic floor for a complex texture that mixes improvisations on violin and viola—McIntosh is a gifted string player—with various thrumming and rustling timbres (bowed piano, bowed wineglasses, bowed cymbals, a scraped slate). Microtonal tunings, electronic processing, and rough string attacks engender ferocious climaxes. Periodically, that fabric drops away to reveal the underlying forest acoustic. “Moonbeam” is a contemplative creation that generates enormous tension and release.”
Alex Ross (article about Wild Up’s Darkness Sounding festival)
New York Times
“As good as anything this weekend was Andrew McIntosh’s “Little Jimmy” (2020), a quartet for two pianists and two percussionists that takes its name from a campsite in the San Gabriel Mountains. McIntosh made field recordings there a few months before it was devastated by a fire, and the resulting piece is a subtly rending reflection on the climate crisis, and what can be salvaged from ashes. Restrained in his deployment of the recordings, McIntosh conjures an enigmatic, shadowy, quietly colorful world, sometimes bone-dry, sometimes softly shimmering. Piano strings are manipulated with fishing line for a metallic whine; bowing a vibraphone while a tubular bell is gently struck ends up sounding like how a shiver feels."
Zachary Woolfe (review of the 2022 Ojai Festival)
NPR
“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 (Top 10 Classical Albums of 2017: LA Percussion Quartet's Beyond)
New York Times
“Deliberate in its pace, both stark and lush, intimate and inward yet often grand and loud, Andrew McIntosh’s new piece was built from his violin and viola - harshly bowed during improvisation sessions to create a metallic roar - as well as from piano, bowed wine glasses, and bowed cymbals”
Zachary Woolfe (preview of A moonbeam is just a filtered sunbeam at Wild Up’s Darkness Sounding festival)
Pop Matters
“a phenomenal work of shifting colors and evolving textures that revels in the process of gradually revealing itself over time."
Andy Jurik (I Hold the Lion's Paw on LAPQ's album, Beyond)
The New Yorker
“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 (Hopscotch opera)
Stage and Cinema
“There was an underlying joy to the neatness of it all, a clear intellect simply cherishing harmony."
Daniel S. G. Wood (Shasta at the LA Philharmonic)
L.A. Times
“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 (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
The Rambler
“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 (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
TEMPO
“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 (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
Just Outside
“One of the most enjoyable things I've heard this year."
Brian Olewnick (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
San Francisco Classical Voice
“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 (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
www.bachtrack.com
“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 (Yelling Into the Wind)
L.A. Times
“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 (Grisey festival at REDCAT)
Sequenza 21
“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 (Feldman's For John Cage at Dogstar)
L.A. Times
“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 (Klaus Lang's einfalt.stille. at Monday Evening Concerts)
A Closer Listen
“Clearly invested in the material, they’ve risked emotional drain in order to infuse it with blood and fire."
Richard Allen (Formalist Quartet recording of Nicholas Deyoe's for ever day is another view of the tentative past)
“As a meditation on a place that McIntosh loves, Little Jimmy is a quiet love letter to the ever-evolving reality of life on Earth."
Vanessa Ague (review of Little Jimmy album)
The New Yorker
“Moonbeam” bears the imprint of a composer preternaturally attuned to the landscapes and soundscapes of the West. ...In “Moonbeam,” the field recordings serve as the sonic floor for a complex texture that mixes improvisations on violin and viola—McIntosh is a gifted string player—with various thrumming and rustling timbres (bowed piano, bowed wineglasses, bowed cymbals, a scraped slate). Microtonal tunings, electronic processing, and rough string attacks engender ferocious climaxes. Periodically, that fabric drops away to reveal the underlying forest acoustic. “Moonbeam” is a contemplative creation that generates enormous tension and release.”
Alex Ross (article about Wild Up’s Darkness Sounding festival)
New York Times
“As good as anything this weekend was Andrew McIntosh’s “Little Jimmy” (2020), a quartet for two pianists and two percussionists that takes its name from a campsite in the San Gabriel Mountains. McIntosh made field recordings there a few months before it was devastated by a fire, and the resulting piece is a subtly rending reflection on the climate crisis, and what can be salvaged from ashes. Restrained in his deployment of the recordings, McIntosh conjures an enigmatic, shadowy, quietly colorful world, sometimes bone-dry, sometimes softly shimmering. Piano strings are manipulated with fishing line for a metallic whine; bowing a vibraphone while a tubular bell is gently struck ends up sounding like how a shiver feels."
Zachary Woolfe (review of the 2022 Ojai Festival)
NPR
“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 (Top 10 Classical Albums of 2017: LA Percussion Quartet's Beyond)
New York Times
“Deliberate in its pace, both stark and lush, intimate and inward yet often grand and loud, Andrew McIntosh’s new piece was built from his violin and viola - harshly bowed during improvisation sessions to create a metallic roar - as well as from piano, bowed wine glasses, and bowed cymbals”
Zachary Woolfe (preview of A moonbeam is just a filtered sunbeam at Wild Up’s Darkness Sounding festival)
Pop Matters
“a phenomenal work of shifting colors and evolving textures that revels in the process of gradually revealing itself over time."
Andy Jurik (I Hold the Lion's Paw on LAPQ's album, Beyond)
The New Yorker
“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 (Hopscotch opera)
Stage and Cinema
“There was an underlying joy to the neatness of it all, a clear intellect simply cherishing harmony."
Daniel S. G. Wood (Shasta at the LA Philharmonic)
L.A. Times
“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 (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
The Rambler
“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 (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
TEMPO
“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 (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
Just Outside
“One of the most enjoyable things I've heard this year."
Brian Olewnick (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
San Francisco Classical Voice
“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 (Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure album)
www.bachtrack.com
“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 (Yelling Into the Wind)
L.A. Times
“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 (Grisey festival at REDCAT)
Sequenza 21
“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 (Feldman's For John Cage at Dogstar)
L.A. Times
“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 (Klaus Lang's einfalt.stille. at Monday Evening Concerts)
A Closer Listen
“Clearly invested in the material, they’ve risked emotional drain in order to infuse it with blood and fire."
Richard Allen (Formalist Quartet recording of Nicholas Deyoe's for ever day is another view of the tentative past)