Passionate.
The New York Times
Piercy brought forth a sense of mood and appealing emotion helped by his consistently warm and beautiful sound.
The Norway Times
Piercy came out swinging. People could imagine they were hearing the late, great Benny Goodman as Piercy wove to and fro.
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Piercy played with expression and character.
The New York Concert Review
Piercy has it all...extraordinary technique, a uniquely beautiful sound. He made the clarinet sing.
Le Libre Paris
A classic performance.
The Clarinet Magazine
Extraordinary performances by top players bring distinction to this recording... Piercy shows remarkable virtuosity in some deep emotional terrain.
Times Union, NY
While Ned Rorem's music is certainly complex, it still possesses a romantic leaning that, especially with the Gotham Ensemble playing, is both thought-provoking and emotive.
New Music Box
This was a most exciting evening of new music for clarinet and piano.
Hour
Mr. Piercy is masterly on his clarinet.
The New York Sun
...an intense and illuminating musical experience, Tom Piercy met the many technical demands asked for in the work, especially providing colors ranging from warm to astringent.
New Music Connoisseur
The eight musicians include the composer at the piano and they play a score longer than many operas with as much easy energy at the end as at the beginning.
The New York Times
The Best Piazzolla in New York. On Monday afternoon, there couldn’t have been anything better...an impressively inclusive overview of Piazzolla’s career. Piercy’s often mournful clarinet, flying over Hickman’s tasteful, understated piano and Odaka’s insistent, pulsing bass brought out every bit of melody in the program. The crowd was spellbound. If Piercy’s planned upcoming recording of Piazzolla works is anything like this, it’ll be amazing.
Lucid Culture
It didn’t matter that there was no bandoneon in the band: the trio of clarinetist/arranger Thomas Piercy, pianist Claudine Hickman and upright bassist Pablo Aslan managed to silence the sold-out room (no easy task!) with a practically telepathic, emotionally rich program of both familiar and more obscure compositions by the legendary Argentinian composer, along with meticulous yet spirited performances of two pieces by French jazz composer/pianist Claude Bolling....Piercy expertly worked the nooks and crannies of the songs’ innumerable permutations, only going full throttle when the piece demanded it. They wrapped up the program with an exquisite take of the classic Soledad, Piercy’s clarinet soaring to the heights with unaffectedly raw anguish right before the end, and closed with the vastly more optimistic, insistent Michelangelo ‘70. Piazzolla, ever the innovator, would no doubt have approved.
Lucid Culture
The performers — played with refinement and flair throughout a concert spanning diverse styles and configurations. There was also more than a hint of the serpentine in Samuel Andreyev’s haunting “Passages,†a gelatinous clarinet soliloquy.
The New York Times
An expressive performance of the virtuosic program.
The New York Times
