“After 34 years on the job, you expect more than a gold watch, and Linda Reichert, stepping down as Network for New Music’s artistic director, got something more valuable and durable,” writes Peter Dobrin in Monday’s (4/30) Philadelphia Inquirer. “Sunday afternoon at the Settlement Music School Queen Village branch, she and a warm, embracing audience were presented with nine new works commissioned to honor her era as one of the city’s chief stimulants of new music.… Several of the works paused on a sense of tender resignation as Reichert’s time ends and that of her successor, composer and guitarist Thomas Schuttenhelm, begins. The instrumental forces varied from solo piano to small chamber ensemble…. Reichert is a pianist, and several composers honored her by writing for that instrument. John Harbison’s Nocturne was at the serious end of the spectrum…. The task of playing it fell to Reichert herself, and her playing only highlighted what it’s meant to have such a sensitive performing artist in the position of curator all these years.” Also performed was music by Andrea Clearfield, Bernard Rands, Maurice Wright, Richard Wernick, Melinda Wagner, Augusta Read Thomas, Jennifer Higdon, Michael Hersch, Gareth Haynes, and James Primosch.
Posted May 1, 2018
