Feature articles

Preview of Five-ring Concerto

About the composition Up Wind, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra commission

About the Opera Alternate Visions -
Georgia Straight preview article

Amazon.com review of Icicle Blue Avalanche (CD)
Immerse Yourself, February 21, 2010
(Florida) - See all my reviews

By	Paul A. Toth

This review is from: Icicle Blue Avalanche (Audio CD)
John Oliver's Icicle Blue Avalanche proves true to his concept of "immersive music." He accomplishes this through a collage of musical approaches, the results being a kind of melodic dissonance and, at other times, ambient dissonance. The guitar playing is excellent and perfectly complemented by the atmospheric drones, bass and other tones.

One hears echoes of his exhaustive knowledge of music as expressed on his site, John Oliver on Music Performance and Composition, which covers, as he puts it, "philosophy of music, music and society, new (and old) musical models, listening to sound, writing for instruments, new media, immersive music, live electronics, algorithmic music, computer as musical tool, playing fretless and other nylon-stringed guitars, and his own compositions and work-in-progress."

However, Mr. Oliver's influences are not duplicated; instead, he reinvents them. The result is something like walking through a forest neither bereft of nor fraught with danger; that's to say these pieces do not set the listener's teeth to grinding, but they also don't sooth in the "new age" manner as if the listener somehow hit "play" while sleeping.

Highly recommended.

Press

“I’m willing to bet that Oliver’s [Five-Ring] concerto, with or without the sports connection, is an Olympic legacy, not just an Olympic pièce d’occasion.”
Vancouver Sun Music Critic David Gordon Duke on hearing the dress rehearsal for Oliver’s new Five-ring Concerto. Full article.

"Both intellectually stimulating and a great deal of fun, Eagle Flies to Mountain deserves to become an intercultural standard."
The Georgia Straight. Read Full Review.

"a delicate yet often complex sense of beauty"
Musicworks

"Playful and stirring"
– Mack Hagood, The Far East Audio Review. Read Full Review.

"John Oliver's Icicle Blue Avalanche [is] one of the most viscerally dramatic discs I've heard in quite a while ... huge slabs of extremely solid music."
-George Zahora, Splendidezine.com Read Full Review.

"…an episode of Wild Kingdom interpreted by a klezmer band. Lots of fun."
Vancouver Sun

"Guacamayo...a colorful, fascinating fantasia on Mayan legends."
The New Yorker

"Much food for thought, and for the ears."
The Globe and Mail

"…ingenious…superb…delightful… ...marvelous…" "extraordinary sounds…"
Victoria Times-Colonist

"…dramatic and emotional."
Ottawa Citizen

"a master of the guitar"
The Georgia Straight