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Press / Quotes

David Matthews

"Matthews is one of the nation's most valuable assets. His music is lyrical and approachable yet quirky and unpredictable. Firmly rooted in both Classical and Romantic traditions - Beethoven and Mahler are particular enthusiasms - it is enriched by the culture from which it springs."
- Barry Millington, Evening Standard, London, November 2003

"(Matthews is) a very modern kind of romantic, passionately personal in his expressions…"
- Stephen Johnson, The Independent, London

Jean Hasse

"(Her music is) rhythmic but hypnotic, including, for instance, lots of open fourths, tone clusters, wide space between clear, intertwining lines, lots of long, echoey pedalling, and a beautiful use of silence which in kinkh is used every bit as rhythmically as the notes."
- Jessica Duchen, BBC Music Magazine, March 2000

"The music's lucidity, combined with the range of its references (which often include jazz), its improvisatory flair and its sheer quirkiness, make it a source of continual surprise."
- Christopher Ballantine, International Record Review, June 2000

"Jean is articulating that space in our souls between language and music that is so elusive."
- John Williams, composer/conductor

"She chooses good notes."
- Seiji Ozawa, conductor, after hearing a performance of Silk Water, played by pianist Leon Fleisher

"(Hasse's) dedicated mobile (phone) music - abstract compositions rather than a Casio version of the Mission: Impossible theme tune - could make life more bearable and even create a micro-genre."
- Financial Times, 30/31 March 2002, The Business magazine

"I've never witnessed anything like it before. It was like being on a rocket and visiting stars in the universe, each star as small as it looks from here on earth, yet each star complete, a powerfully complete thing, place, atmosphere, motion and life."
- Carolyn Chute, novelist, after hearing a performance of many of the Pocket Pieces for piano (1998)