“The voice of an original composer with something important to say could be clearly heard…The composer lives in Toronto; he is worth watching, even from afar.”
— Allan Rich, L.A Weekly
“Brian Current toyed with speeds and textures, using the orchestra in much the same way that a precomputer electronic musician might use a tape deck. Different sections played at different tempos. Occasionally, almost from nowhere, a brief passage of straightforward symphonic chords would emerge and then dissolve into the changeable fabric.”
— Allan Kozinn, The New York Times
“Music may never have sounded quite so intoxicating.”
— Michael Clive, The Villager (New York)
“Dynamic extremes, buoyant patterns, hyperactive percussion assignments and cataclysmic crescendos. It’s all boisterous good fun.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“The young Canadian’s wild and witty work stretches and curves ideas through time in a series of portamento gestures. One noted the clarity of Current’s ideas, as well as his playfully radical edge.”
— Tempo (Cambridge, UK)
“Tremendously stimulating music….a composer with an ear for texture that can delight as well as overwhelm.”
— Colin Clarke, Fanfare
“Brian Current writes cutting-edge music that combines traditional and avant-garde playing techniques, all manner of tonality, and terrific imagination.”
— Barry Kilpatrick, American Record Guide
“A full orchestra winding itself up and racing through the curves, with a mad shifting profusion of detail in the scoring, was a miraculous apparition.”
— Robert Everett-Green, the Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“[Current] actually came closer to insanity than Lara but in the happiest of ways. The solo violin writing, spectacularly played by Movses Pogossian, is sort of Paganini on LSD. Fun is to be had if you have a strong stomach and really good players.”
— Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times
“The varied creativity of... Brian Current is on vivid display in five substantial orchestral works...There is never a dull sound, and many sublime moments.”
— Toronto Star
“The Canadian composer has given the world a large, handsomely scored piece full of ideas, colors and textures, and Morgan and the orchestra played it with obvious enthusiasm. If every new work performed in the Bay Area this season sounded this appealing, music lovers would be fortunate indeed.”
— Conta Costa Times
“Current’s music is amazing. His control over orchestral colour and detail and his utterly convincing sense of design and proportion rein in the chaotic energy of 21st century art music’s eclectic vocabulary.”
— Stephen Pedersen, Halifax Chronicle-Herald
“On Thursday, Toronto composer (and head of new-music performance at the Royal Conservatory of Music) Brian Current arrived to rehearse Soma, a new commission from the orchestra.
After plowing through the opening measures of his intense, deftly structured, often uncomfortably piercing evocation of a journey towards an exalted state, Current stopped the music to do some fixing with the players.
”Your job is not to relax; your job is to inspire people,” insisted Current. He later elaborated that each artist’s real job is to reflect “what it is to be alive in this time and in this place.””