REVIEWS

A superb collaborator.
– Robert Battey, The Washington Post 


Martin Kennedy's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra may be new, but its buoyant sound harkens back to the bold, sophisticated popular classical American music of the 1940s and 1950s. Kennedy's piece, which debuted Sunday afternoon by the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra, has the audacity to be likeable, tuneful and utterly accessible.
  The piece highlighted the final bill for the orchestra's 2007-08 season at the Concert Hall in the University of Alabama 's Moody Music Building . The orchestra commissioned the work from Kennedy, an assistant professor of composition and theory at Washington University in St. Louis, in honor of Gloria Narramore Moody.
  At the piano was Molly Morkoski, whose striking green gown matched the shimmering texture of the concerto she was playing. She combined with the orchestra, under the passionate baton of Shinik Hahm, to produce an invigorating sound that gave a clear, dynamic reading of the concerto. The third movement, in particular, combined emotional complexity with a sleekness that evoked the fascination and melancholy of urban life.
  Morkoski and the percussion section stood out, especially in the final movement. Morkoski clearly relished performing the debut of a work that sent her hands scurrying up and down the keyboard. To me, the piece resounded with the atmosphere of America circa 1950 — jazzy, confident, sleek and grinning.
– Richard Comte, The Tuscaloosa News ["Commissioned piece evokes music from America's past"] 


Martin Kennedy's three-movement flute concerto follows understated, transparent directions. Despite its overall economy, the concerto's first movement, a mystical adagio, grows progressively in size and density, a rewarding strategy of delayed gratification.
  A striking blast of snare drum introduces the darting flute lines in the concerto's second movement . . . The music's often spare orchestration helped [flutist Rachel] Ciraldo and the several soloists within the ensemble be easily heard, especially during the rapid finale movement.
  Kennedy's well-constructed, attractive concerto suggests that this young composer, a professor of composition and theory at Washington University in St. Louis, has a promising future.
– John Wirt, The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)


Kennedy, a Juilliard-trained composer who grew up in Tuscaloosa and now teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, presented his Trivial Pursuits, a work inspired by the board game. Cleverly constructed in six sections, it starts with a walking bass in the piano and winsomely segues through contrasting sections. Drawing from jazz and blues, it uses St. John's considerable virtuosity wisely.
– Michael Huebner, The Birmingham News


Written with St. John's capabilities in mind, [Trivial Pursuits is] bluesy, bouncy, virtuosic and offbeat with interesting violin lines supported by a solid and sometimes big piano part. St. John played the dickens out of it. . . Her pianist, Martin Kennedy, provided strong and empathetic support bolstered by a big and sometimes bold tone.
– Geraldine Freedman, The Daily Gazette (Troy, NY)


Martin Kennedy's Trivial Pursuits was a memorable 'six slices' of music revolving around a major scale ground bass, with some influence of jazz and even Bartok in the harmonies, very nicely performed. . . [B]oth violinist and pianist played with impressive accuracy and at times great delicacy.
– Priscilla McLean, The Times Union [Troy, NY] 


The speed and showmanship of St. John’s pyrotechnics [in the conclusion of the John Corigliano’s Violin Sonata] won cheers from the small but enthusiastic audience. Composer-pianist Martin Kennedy, one of St. John’s frequent collaborators, was a consummate partner, playing with comparable concentration and volatile intensity. . . Kennedy’s own Trivial Pursuits (2010) is a well-crafted vignette combining blues and ragtime that seemed tailor-made for St. John’s combustible style.
– Lawrence Budman, The Miami Herald 


The rounded beauty of [Kim] Kashkashian’s sound could turn harsh and gutsy when appropriate, matched by the pianistic dexterity of Martin Kennedy. . . In the second set of Copland’s Old American Songs, Kashkashian’s molten tones became the instrumental baritone voice. Her unhurried, song-like version of “At the River” and a brisk, deft “Zion’s Walls” were striking. The instrument’s high end took a rare spotlight in a take no prisoners run at “Ching-A-Ring Chaw”, Kennedy keeping pace adeptly.
– Lawrence Budman, The Miami Herald 


Two of the Corigliano pieces were arrangements of excerpts from larger works. [John Corigliano’s] Phantasmagoria . . . intimately traverses the shifting moods of the opera buffa-French Revolution fantasy. The ghost music of the cello’s high-lying harmonics over piano arpeggios acts as a unifying thread in this virtuoso showpiece. Matt Haimovitz showed himself as a patrician master of the cello, whether playing broad romantic melodies or unleashing ferocious attacks in the vigorous display passages. Pianist Martin Kennedy was a consummate partner, dispatching Corigliano’s knuckle-busting keyboard writing with aplomb.
– Lawrence Budman, The Miami Herald 


[Stephen] Gosling was even more powerful in Martin Kennedy's extravagantly written Theme and Variations [from his Piano Sonata].  Kennedy begins with a lazy theme that quickly swells to Lisztian proportions, requiring heroic keyboard prowess.  Its quiet ending, dappled with the faint sounds of an ambulance passing by outside, made Gosling's sweat and blood feel all the more tangible.
– Bruce Hodges, MusicWeb International


The final piece on the record is the Totentanz, written for piano and orchestra by Liszt and published in its final version in 1865. St. John's charming note on this transcription says she worked out the violin part while Kennedy reorchestrated the piece, and the result is most successful. While it has all of Liszt's short-attention-span style of compositional organization, it also has all of his razzle-dazzle, and the result is a violin showstopper with a very muscular orchestral part. It could be a nice addition to a solo violinist's repertoire, and St. John and Kennedy should be commended for fashioning it with intelligence and taste.
– Greg Stepanich, The Palm Beach Post
 

[T]he real showstopper here is the gloriously unrestrained, deliriously over-the-top adaptation of Liszt's demonic Totentanz, which St. John negotiates with scintillating abandon and chutzpah, supported to the hilt by some deliciously uncoiffered playing from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's brass section.
– Julian Haylock, The Strad


. . . the violinist's adaptation of Liszt's Totentanz is the true center of this recording. Liszt was a virtuoso's virtuoso and his compositions were for the glory of only one: himself. But when one has talent to burn, that is okay. St. John and collaborator Martin Kennedy coax all of the Lisztian pathos from the master's dance of death. In the bargain, the two identify Liszt as an integral link between the great Beethoven and Wagner—in Liszt, those two geniuses shake hands.
– C. Michael Baily, allaboutjazz.com 


Written with St. John's capabilities in mind, [Trivial Pursuits is] bluesy, bouncy, virtuosic and offbeat with interesting violin lines supported by a solid and sometimes big piano part. St. John played the dickens out of it. . . Her pianist, Martin Kennedy, provided strong and empathetic support bolstered by a big and sometimes bold tone.
– Geraldine Freedman, The Daily Gazette (Troy, NY)


Martin Kennedy's Trivial Pursuits was a memorable 'six slices' of music revolving around a major scale ground bass, with some influence of jazz and even Bartok in the harmonies, very nicely performed. . . [B]oth violinist and pianist played with impressive accuracy and at times great delicacy.
– Priscilla McLean, The Times Union [Troy, NY]


The evening opened with the European premiere of an ambitious Sonata that the similarly-aged Martin Kennedy wrote specifically for [pianist Soheil] Nasseri. The Sonata is dense with a continuity of eloquence that flows naturally under Nasseri's agile, sensitive, and secure fingers.
– Pietro Misuraca, Giornale di Sicilia 


[Four Songs and Souvenir] are sure to become staples of the flute repertoire.
– Flute Talk Magazine


[A Pantry Ballet in Four Acts] is an extraordinary piece and should find a prominent place with our flute choir enthusiasts.
– Jeanne Baxtresser, former principal flutist of the New York Philhamonic


Flutist Thomas Robertello’s pairing of Souvenir by Martin Kennedy with the Fantasie by Gabriel Fauré was heart-stoppingly beautiful.  Kennedy’s sound world is so closely related to Fauré that without peeking at the program, one would think his Souvenir was one of the myriad lovely French salon pieces — no wild technique, just simple beauty — but with an enchanting, fresh touch... I later picked up and devoured a CD of works by both Kennedy and Fauré recorded by Robertello and Kennedy, the composer and pianist.
– Gayle Williams, The Longboat Observer


The unexpected in Friday's concert came courtesy of Martin Kennedy who received secondary billing in the printed program as pianist for [flutist Thomas] Robertello. His pianism didn't surprise... But young Kennedy, a cherubic presence on stage, emerged as a double threat man Friday as he sat at the Steinway to team with flutist Robertello in a performance, and a searing one, of his own composition, Four Songs for Flute and Piano. When I say that he has accepted vibes from a variety of sources, I do not mean to suggest he lacks his own voice. No, indeed. These pieces, which effectively make the flute an equivalent of the vocalist, have been beautifully constructed by someone with a musical mind of his own... Throughout, he has given both the pianist, in this case himself, and the flutist, the remarkable agile Robertello, various sorts of challenges that, nevertheless, at all times, serve the cause of music rather than mere technical exhibition. Both composition and performance impressed.
– Peter Jacobi,  Bloomington Herald Times


Both Gabriel Fauré's Fantasie and Martin Kennedy's Souvenir provoke precisely that sensation, contrasting the elegiac flute melody with the rhythmic pulse and color of the piano. Fauré's distinctive French style seems to have been the model for Kennedy's later exploration of very similar thematic material.
– Richard Storm, Sarasota Herald-Tribune


[ Salvatore Sciarrino's] one-movement Piano Trio No. 2 was surprisingly rich in contrasts.  Violinist Miranda Cuckson and cellist Jesus Castro-Balbi deftly kept their musical exchange to a whisper, unfazed by the suitably violent outbursts of pianist Martin Kennedy.
– The Strad

RECORDINGS

Rebecca Bower Cherian, trombone Rodrigo Ojeda, piano Water Awakening: Music for Trombone and Piano includes Theme and Variations Katherine DeJongh, flute Polish National Chamber Orchestra of Slupsk Twentieth Century Works for Flute and Orchestra includes Souvenir (arr. for flute, string orchestra and harp Pam Youngblood, flute Gabriel Bita, piano Wind Song includes Four Songs Thomas Robertello, flute Martin Kennedy, piano Souvenir: Works of Fauré and Kennedy includes Four Songs and Souvenir Lara St. John, violin The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Sarah Ioannides, conductor includes Totentanz (Liszt, arr. Kennedy/St. John)