November
17, 2003 ”Concerts
span the musical universe”
”. . . It was a different world
Friday evening at Eyedrum,
where
there
was no score to work from at all. The musicians performed an excerpt
from Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Aus Den Sieben Tagen from 1968.
. .
The
performers pulled it off— they made enchanting abstract music
that
sounded like Stockhausen’s: pretty plinks and ominous groans
and
weird,
wispy electronic sounds spread over 40 minutes. Their secret? Michael
Fowler and Stuart Gerber, together called Ensemble Sirius and playing a
variety of instruments, studied with the composer and are steeped in
Stockhausen’s mystical paradise. . . Ensemble Sirius opened
with
excerpts from Tierkreis (1975)—music that does have
notation—and showed
themselves masters of the medium. With wit, sensitivity and crisp
attacks, the Sirius boys played this crazy beautiful music with a
certain debonair cool. . . They made it impossible to resist the
Stockhausen spell. . .”
Piere Rhue
October 5, 2002 ”A Series of
firsts assembled”
”When the laid back members of
Ensemble Sirius, pianist
Michael
Fowler
and percussionist Stuart Gerber give a concert, they do so with
inimitable panache. Every piece on their Friday evening at Georgia
State University’s Recital Hall was a premiere: two world premieres
and
a group of firsts for Atlanta. . . ”
Piere Rhue
Atlanta
Constitution-Journal
November 2, 2008 "Stockhausen's
'Heavens Gate' and more"
"Ensemble Sirius, the
piano-percussion duo of Michael Fowler and Stuart
Gerber, specializes in the music of the late German composer Karlheinz
Stockhausen. They gave a sensationally good concert Saturday night at
Emory’s Performing Arts Studio, a black-box space that was
— three
cheers for avant-garde music! — filled to capacity. . .The
duo’s
playing is incredibly assured, almost cocky. They made it impossible to
not be sucked into the wonderful and frightening world of Stockhausen."
Piere Rhue
June 5, 2007 ”Soak up the Arts
at Spoleto”
”. . . The program’s
second half was devoted to the
composer’s 1959-60
groundbreaking work Kontakte, scored for piano, prerecorded
electronically generated sounds, a stage-full of mostly amplified
percussion, and a surround-sound system through which each of these
different groupings is broadcast, occasionally all coming in Kontakte
with each other. The work’s intellectual construct is as
impressive as
its immense logistical and musical challenges, all confidently met by
Sirius—specifically, Michael Fowler on piano and percussion,
Gerber on
percussion, and Bryan Wolf on sound projection.”
Susan Elliot
January
3, 2005 ”Ensemble Sirius Plays Stockhausen at
Eyedrum”
”.
. .
Ensemble Sirius, a duo that uses percussion, keyboards and
electronics to bring classics of musical modernism to life.
. .
All at once, you could feel the energy and intensity
dramatically rise in the room. Serene, cool, moody, at turns lovely and
haunting, the music was indeed dreamily universal, where the modernist
art made perfect sense.
Piere Rhue