Keyboards / Winds: Music of Louis Karchin

“In the end, the program is a tribute to Karchin’s resilience, creative voice, and formidable technique. It’s also testimony to his openness to change. This music reaches back to some more traditional tropes, but never with shallow nostalgia. Here is a composer who is still looking forward but has not given up on the past. Listeners with more traditional tastes but open ears, take note.”

“As an academic, conductor and composer, Karchin has a thorough familiarity with many areas of contemporary music, having worked with composers and performers who employ a wide range of idioms. In his own music, he seems to me to be utterly true to himself, rather than to any fashionable idioms. In all his music, at least all of it that I have heard, there is a seriousness of mind to which he remains true……a learned composer who does not allow his sophistication to get in the way of his music being accessible to all whose ears and minds are not entirely closed to ‘modern’ music.”

“Louis Karchin writes imaginative, colorful music that is often challenging, but always accessible. The idiom is usually tonal, with lots of spice and crunch. Most of these pieces were written during Covid, yet the mood is upbeat. We get music for winds, piano and organ, making for pleasing variety.”