Press
Patricia Alessandrini - Leçons de ténèbres CD (Gramophone 2023)
Clues to identities provided in the titles - Alma Mahler, Henry Purcell, François Couperin, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and other composers of Requiems and Lamentations - are explored in an invaluable booklet essay by Tim Rutherford-Johnson; and with the first item, Song of Alma, the prominence in the mix of a soprano voicing aspiring ascents like those in the climactic Trio of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier contributes very explicitly to the aura of ritualised yearning and regret that the other items reimagine with unsparing concentration. […] These Alessandrini recordings are supremely well crafted, and the performances radiate a dedicated concern to do the music justice.
– Arnold Whittall, Gramophone
Cosmologies CD (Boring Like A Drill 2023)
Ballon’s intense concentration is matched by her accompanying ensemble in Graphology, where solo cello is joined by bass flute and clarinet, violin and percussion to produce a piece with no immediate difference in texture from the solo work. Aaron Holloway-Nahum leads the Riot Ensemble in an essay of supreme restraint, producing the smallest possible swatches of attenuated sounds in their most muted colours to build up a piece that exists without ever quite substantiating into a definable form. In retrospect, the most curious part is the way the musicians hold everything in poise without discenible momentum, yet never lapsing into torpor. The techniques here resemble Lachenmann in extremis, but the usual strained effect heard in music of this type is largely absent
– Ben Harper, Boring Like a Drill
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (Outside Left 2022)
The instruments battle for control and find themselves driven literally by regular bullwhip lashes. I love it….Wow! Two pieces that are the essence of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Plexus, a reel to reel cacophony of sound rhythms, steel saws played with violin bows, stones bashed together and dropped into pianos, violins played with bottles, wood slapped, cymbals beaten, brushed, you get the idea, ref’s whistles, yeah the essence of hcmf. Harry Parch would weep with joy.
– Toon Traveler, Outside Left
Solstices (The Standard 2021)
If you’ve ever been awoken by a disconcerting thump in the night and frantically tried to assess whether it was the cat, the upstairs neighbour or a crazed axe-murderer hacking down the front door, you’ll know that sound holds a certain power in the dark.
And in this performance of Solstices — Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas’s mercurial piece for 10 instruments, which is by turns meditative and violent, and is written to be played in total darkness — the force is undeniable….The darkness amplifies everything. During the sedated drones of the quieter sections, as the guitar and detuned piano begin to coalesce, it becomes easier than ever to get lost in thought. But as things take a turn for the vicious, with clattering drums and animalistic screeches from the horns, it feels inescapable. Holloway-Nahum warned the audience in his pre-show introduction that there would be three “cataclysmic” interruptions, and he wasn’t overstating it. After the first almighty crash, I can feel my heart pounding in my chest.
– Jochan Embley, The Standard
Extinction Events (I Care If You Listen 2020)
The Riot Ensemble’s programme made us think, but most of all it made us feel, and their performance of Lim’s Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus will stay with me for a long time.
– Caroline Potter, I Care If You Listen
Dark Music Days (Iceland 2018)
There’s a lot of buzz around this ensemble – and they didn’t disappoint. From a percussionist playing a cymbal and a xylophone with a violin bow (it sounded pretty creepy), to an oboist inhaling rather than exhaling into his instrument, Riot Ensemble showed just how versatile their instruments could be.
– Classic FM
Speak, Be Silent (Limelight Magazine 2019)
These works are brought to life spectacularly by the Riot Ensemble. Its performances are uniformly excellent, combining precision with warmth, understanding and assurance. The recording is incredible – close, clean and big, uncluttered with no hint of brittleness in the upper registers – allowing the manifold sonic nuances to breathe. A most impressive release.
– Lisa MacKinney, Limelight Magazine
Speak, Be Silent (Sequenza21 2019)
The Riot Ensemble, conducted by Aaron Holloway-Nahum, plays skillfully throughout, attending to each score’s myriad details. it is worth noting that the disc’s aesthetic touches, from appealing artwork and riveting sound to an engaging liner notes essay by Tim Rutherford-Johnson, are potent reminders that a physical artifact trumps the current craze for booklet-less (information-less) and sonically compromised streaming. Speak, Be Silent is one of 2019’s best recordings and certainly one of its most culturally relevant ones as well.
– Christian Carey, Sequenza21
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2017)
So what delight to find oneself swept along the luminous stream of an expertly curated programme, whose narrative began with the minutiae of sound and grew into full-blown music theatre. This was Riot Ensemble, offering a string of premieres directed with authoritative poise by Aaron Holloway-Nahum.
– Helen Wallace, Arts Desk
Les Citations (London, Cambridge, 2014)
Led by the extremely talented composer-conductor Aaron Holloway-Nahum, The Riot Ensemble are the very embodiment of young talent. Their flexible lineup comprises a seemingly endless list of brilliant young musicians…
– Laurence Osborn, Culture Whisperer
Songs and Haiku (The Warehouse, 2013)
“…it is a great privilege to see great friends perform together. Cronje’s rich, warm and expressive voice suited the repertoire of these international composers well. Racovicean’s absolute precision and innate musicality provided coherence and beauty in what could have been very muddy waters….There’s so much more we could say. In just an hour long concert we were given so much to ‘eat’ that we were full to bursting – but still wondering at the beauty of all consumed. Looking forward to the next one!”
Vestige CD (The Guardian 2023)
…Riot Ensemble champion new music and always surprise with the freshness of their repertoire. Their latest album, Vestige, features seven composers, the title taken from a work by Naomi Pinnock….Each of the contrasting tracks is played with expression and finesse by this first-rate group.
– Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian
Kings Place (The Rambler 2022)
Anna Korsun said she was nervous about how her Ulenflucht would sound [in Kings Place’s dry, detailed acoustic] - it was written for reverberant church acoustics - but being able to hear it all so precisely was magical; the dusk chorus effect of a circle of sound emerging out of the hall itself was spellbinding, like being in a forest at twilight, with senses sharpened and all the accompanying myster and terror.
– Tim Rutherford-Johnson, The Rambler
Wigmore Hall (Sunday Times 2021)
For its Wigmore Hall debut the Riot Ensemble took its cue from the natural world, although not in obvious ways. On paper, the work titles spoke of water, clouds and trees; in concert, the sound-worlds took us far beyond the evening’s theme. And with two solo pieces, a duo, a piano quartet and both a string trio and a lesser-spotted singing string trio on the line-up, the programme meant that this contemporary music group changed form as often as the weather….
– Rebecca Franks, The Sunday Times
Extinction Events (The Times 2020)
…extinction was rather the preoccupation of two of the three pieces on a bold programme by the Riot Ensemble at Kings Place, the first of three concerts they are giving there this year. Like a Memory of Birds (ii), written by their conductor, Aaron Holloway-Nahum, in 2019, was the first item, evoking bird song (of an extinct species) and bird habitat by means of deft and delicate handling of the mixed ensemble.
– Paul Driver, The Times
Solstices (The Guardian 2020)
I went to this amazing performance by contemporary music group the Riot Ensemble. It’s quite a long, complicated piece and they do it in complete blackout, to the extent that they covered the fire escape sign. It was that kind of dense dark that starts to feel a bit like velvet and you feel a little claustrophobic. For a start I don’t even know how they hit or played their instruments. The music wasn’t meditative minimalism or something – it was dramatic and theatrical and really intense, hitting metal bins in complete darkness.
– Anna Meredith, The Guardian ‘On My Radar’
Luminate (London 2018)
Luminate, a series of contemporary music concerts at Kings Place, is essential for anyone who cares about the new (the next is 12 October). The inaugural concert, by the Riot Ensemble and focusing on Philip Venables, explored memory, nostalgia, greed, sex, anarchy, all in an hour. What more do you want?
– Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian
Speak, Be Silent (I Care If You Listen 2019)
Speak, Be Silent is a testament to Riot Ensemble’s vision and artistry. Each track on the album has a similar styling that makes the album cohesive, but the unique voices of the composers behind the music make each piece sound fresh and new. The attention to detail and the passion for new music is heard in every note of this project, and fans of the ensemble should be pleased.
– Jarrett Goodchild, I Care If You Listen
Solstices, Dark Music Days (Iceland 2019)
It could hardly be more perfect that the 2019 Dark Music Days – Iceland’s premier contemporary music festival – should have begun last Saturday in complete darkness. This was in Reykjavík’s Nordic House, where the most valiant effort had been made to block out every trace of light for The Riot Ensemble’s world première performance of Georg Friedrich Haas‘ 70-minute Solstices.
The Riot, MeWe360 (London 2015)
The Riot Ensemble’s dedication to showcasing new music and bringing contemporary classical stylings to new audiences in unexpected venues is to be admired, respected, and imitated at every opportunity. The chamber performance is an experience in the cyclical evolution of music performance, and isn’t to be missed.
– Angelina Panozzo, I Care If You Listen
Wednesdays at the Forge (London, 2014)
The opening night [of Wednesdays at the Forge] has two performing groups…the second a group called Riot Ensemble who live up to their name (albeit with exmplary musicianship) and are presenting a programme with the title Flatulence of the Gods: An Evening of Very Low Notes.
Wednesdays at the Forge (London, 2014)
Earlier this year I went to The Forge in Camden to hear The Riot Ensemble present a contemporary programme of homogenous groups. Five bass clarinets played together. Then four trombones (and a tenor voice). Best of all was a piece by US composer Amy Beth Kirsten for five bassoons: “World Under Glass No. 1”. Heard up close, this texture was amazing, the whole room buzzing with bass reeds, like a kaleidoscope of wood panelling.
Kings Place (The Wire 2023)
It is fortunate that my noodle supper has settled somewhat by the time the night’s finale, James Tenney’s Glissade, begins. Few works in the canon have such a dizzying effect…Marianne Schofield, Louise McMonagle and Stephen Upshaw play with a clarity and precision that only emphasise the sheer mind-bending weirdness of the piece…By the time the thunderous trills of the fifth and final movement begin, I feel utterly electrified. A wild and mesmerizing end to an evening rich in psychoacoustic weirdness.
– Robert Berry, The Wire
Kings Place (Tempo 2022)
Two programmes performed at Kings Place in London cemented Riot Ensemble’s position as one of the pre-eminent new-music groups in the UK…The group should also be commended for their championing of contemporary works that are neither being premiered nor part of the standard repertoire of new music ensembles…
– Caroline Potter, Tempo
Fast Darkness (The Wire 2021)
[Chaya] Czernowin’s recent composition Fast Darkness features Riot Ensemble, where it’s turned into a kind of concerto for Horia Dumitrache’s bass clarinet. A second contrabasee clarinet mostly adds stentorian toneless breathing. After its increasing violence and dislocation, the piece ends with a bass clarinet cadenza and the ensemble’s entropic, despairing sigh. Icelandic composer Bára Gísladóttir’s Animals of Your Pasture is slow building and explosive, with a feedback-drenched guitar cadenza exuding a power rarely found in modern composition.
– Andy Hamilton, The Wire
Song Offerings (The Guardian 2020)
The Riot Ensemble unites stylistically divergent composers, all but one in their 30s, on Song Offerings: British Song Cycles (Deutschlandfunk). The title comes from a work by Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012), four settings of texts by Rabindranath Tagore full of longing, joy and the embrace of death, sung with vivid expression by soprano Sarah Dacey. Harvey’s benign spirit hovers elsewhere: Aaron Holloway-Nahum’s Plane Sailing (from a poem by Sasha Dugdale), delicate and detailed, was written shortly before Harvey’s death, and is dedicated to him: a sorrowful lament about a fading life “frail as a cloud”. Laurence Osborn’s Micrographia, in which Dacey is joined by soprano April Frederick, delights in the wondrous microscopic world of the 17th-century natural philosopher Robert Hooke (text by poet Joseph Minden). Three songs by Samantha Fernando complete this well-balanced disc.
– Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian
Song Offerings (British Music Society 2020)
Based in London, Riot Ensemble are a chamber-sized ensemble of top instrumentalists dedicated to the promotion of new-music. The soprano Sarah Dacey is regarded as an important member of the group.
The vocalists and instrumentalists need to work at the highest level of refinement because traditional melody or harmony are not there to help find your place. Riot Ensemble and especially Sarah Dacey are certainly on top of their craft.
– Alan Cooper, British Music Society Album Review
Riot in Dalston (London 2019)
There are many worthwhile things going on in jazz at the moment, and one of them is the collaboration with open-minded young musicians from the straight world. Last night at Cafe Oto there were two such efforts, both featuring an eight-piece contingent from the Riot Ensemble, a London-based group who might be compared, I suppose, to Berlin’s Stargaze Orchestra.
– Richard Williams, The Blue Moment
Carter Double Concerto (London 2018)
There’s something resolutely refreshing about the Riot Ensemble. “We perform music we love for anyone who wants to listen” is its tagline on Twitter. Can performing contemporary music really be that simple? Well, on this evidence, yes. This flexible group is really starting to make its mark, and I’m sure that’s down to the players’ tangible curiosity and enthusiasm.
– Rebecca Franks, The Times
The Riot, MeWe360 (London 2015)
It was a great concert with phenomenal music and well thought out programme. The setting was intimate and this made a big change to how the music was received: sitting comfortably with a drink in your hand is an inviting setting. It is a new (and yet so old) way to hear the music. Holloway-Nahum’s great insight into the composer’s ideas and thoughts (Harvey’s daughter Anna and Gieshoff himself were present too) made the music much more tangible and thought-provoking.
Transatlantic Collaborations (Brighton, 2013)
4/5 Stars: “Don’t be scared of contemporary classical music, since this fantastic evening of compositions from all over the world showcased some beautiful gems. Nicholas Omiccioli’s ‘Invisible Worlds’ was ominous and enthralling, with piano parts like the sustained final chord on ‘Sgt. Pepper’ blending in with a trilling flute sublimely. György Kurtág’s ‘Signs, Games and Messages’ was another highlight, with the ‘Wailing Song’ possessing a fluidity and grace like a smoother musical saw. The night was great value for money (eight classical pieces for a tenner) so check them out when they return to Brighton if you’d like something different and striking.”
– Joe Fuller, The Latest