“Aaron Ger­vais piece was just enter­tain­ing. He is the com­poser of the night for me. Such a funny piece, I cried tears of laughter.”

—@WildKatPR, Tweet fol­low­ing per­for­mance of Sen­sa­tional Rev­o­lu­tion in Med­i­cine, Nov 2009

“I’m a fan of Ger­vais’ light­hearted approach to new music—a field dom­i­nated by too many knit­ted brows.”

—John Ter­auds, The Toronto Star, Oct 2009

“His music stub­bornly refuses to do what mod­ern clas­si­cal music is sup­posed to—not because he’s reac­tionary or defi­ant, but sim­ply because he would rather do things his own way.”

—Char­lie Wilmoth, Dusted Mag­a­zine, Jan 2009

“I laughed my head off last week when I watched the ‘Live Action Com­pos­ing Video’ Aaron Ger­vais has on his Myspace. It is so true to life. Most peo­ple think com­pos­ing music is some near reli­gious expe­ri­ence where the com­poser is car­ried away with the great emo­tion of their music. The real­ity is that it’s mostly sit­ting around eras­ing things.”

—Pat Carrabré, The Sig­nal, Dec 2008

“An artist in full com­mand of his tech­nique whose com­po­si­tions are most orig­i­nal and inven­tive, very sophis­ti­cated and intel­lec­tu­ally engaging.”

—Lt. Gov. of Alberta, Emerg­ing Artist Award, Oct 2008

Jason Caslor has a post on his blog today ref­er­enc­ing a New York Times arti­cle that muses about whether “glitz” or other mar­ket­ing gim­micks are use­ful or hurt­ful for clas­si­cal music. The mus­ing is in ref­er­ence to the effect that con­duc­tor Gus­tavo Dudamel’s flam­boy­ant hair has had on clas­si­cal music (in con­junc­tion with his musi­cal tal­ents). Is it good for the vital­ity of orches­tras and opera com­pa­nies on the long run? (more…)

For a genre that claims to be part of the cut­ting edge, the avant-garde/new clas­si­cal music has been rel­a­tively slow to adopt online tools. I won­der about some of the ways we might improve the sit­u­a­tion. As I’ve writ­ten about before, the major issue of art today is orga­ni­za­tion, not con­tent, so if we assume there is some­thing in what we do that oth­ers might be inter­ested in, we need to find ways to reach them. (more…)

“Did it suc­ceed? To my ears, not really. The struc­ture of the music and the end­less rep­e­ti­tion of hockey terms (Slap­shot! Penalty! High stick­ing!) did not evoke a sense of the bru­tal bal­let that is hockey.”

—Markham His­lop, Cal­gary Bea­con colum­nist, on Hockey Story, Jan 2010

“Ger­vais has three exam­ples of pieces that con­sist of hav­ing peo­ple declaim frag­ments of phrases along with some instru­men­tal lines. He seems to be a one-trick pony, and the trick doesn’t main­tain its inter­est for very long. But per­haps a mod­ern art music ver­sion of rap is in the making.”

—Mark G. Simon, blog­ger on www​.clas​si​cal​mu​sicguide​.com, Oct 2009

“Aardig was Cul­ture no. 1, van Aaron Ger­vais (Canada, 1980) een grap­pige poging om door mid­del van een Apple-laptop de pop­u­laire cul­tuur te ver­zoe­nen met de klassieke. Harp (Ernes­tine Stoop) en piano (John Sni­jders) won­nen het ruim­schoots van de eletronica!”

[Next was Cul­ture no.1, by Aaron Ger­vais (Canada, 1980), a funny attempt to rec­on­cile pop and clas­si­cal music, by means of an Apple lap­top ver­sus harp (Ernes­tine Stoop) and piano (John Snijders)—the lap­top won!]

—Ger­ard van der Leeuw, De Rode Leeuw, Sep 2006