“[The Bergamot Quartet and Claire Chase] performed Anthony Cheung’s “Real Book of Fake Tunes,” a collection of short pieces that are not exactly “tunes” in the traditional sense, but rather encourage performers — and audiences — to luxuriate in the shifting colors and textures of the instruments… Bergamot’s sound zipped up, radiating with an urgency to communicate something fascinating and rare.”

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“Cheung has matured, the refinement of his writing illuminates discourse as form. If the Impressionist tendency of "The Real Book of Fake Tunes" (2015) can sometimes call to mind Debussy or Roussel (undoubtedly the alloy of the flute and the strings, here a quartet) and even Murail, it is thanks not only to the fluidity of the material, but especially to the circulation of its influx between the voices.”

Pierre Rigaudière, Diapason (5-star review of Cycles and Arrows, translated from French)

“Cycles And Arrows is, like Dystemporal from 2016, further proof that Cheung is one of the finest composers of our time.”

Cheung’s concern with instrumental color follows naturally from his formation as a composer… One of the more adventurous instances is More Marginalia (2014) for a ten-piece ensemble… The ensemble’s unconventional makeup allows Cheung to set up shifting timbral alliances and oppositions between groups of instruments whose contrasting voices reflect contrasting traditions and playing techniques; especially effective are the contrasts between the plucked and bowed Chinese instruments on the one hand, and Western strings and winds on the other.

the interaction and shifting focus of [Claire] Chase and Spektral [Quartet] does evoke a fluidity we don’t often experience in contemporary composed music.

“Cheung’s vis-à-vis was a tumultuous, hard-driving affair, with deft orchestration that ranged from chirpy winds to sampled electronics to trippy apps played on iPhones.”

On All thorn, but cousin to your rose: “Cheung’s piece was a metatextual monodrama commentary on translation and artistry, with [Jacob] Greenberg again anchoring a keyboard instrument (this time piano) and soprano Paulina Swierczek acting as the audience’s guide through layers of Nabokov, Google Translate, and Edgar Allan Poe.”

“‘Topos,’…straddled these two extremes with daunting magnificence...In four movements for large orchestra, Cheung took up the "Topos" ("Topics") of night music, "Storm and Stress," love, and hunting, in each case repurposing apt excerpts from the likes of Beethoven and Mahler as pigments in the musical equivalent of a freeform drip painting.”

“The allusions seem almost as Pavlovian triggers, prompting the listener to hear other signals of the "topos" embedded in Cheung's original music. The work requires a vast orchestra, used with great skill.”

“Composer Cheung…cheerfully acknowledged in a program note that his piece didn’t contain much in the way of “tunes.” But the influence of jazz could be detected in each of its five movements, from the swoopy strings under the stratospheric piccolo and violin phrases of the opening bars to the graceful swing and sway of the movement that followed..”

“Dystemporal for 23 players (2012) presents turbulent sound textures with a bewildering simultaneity of difference, a wonderfully disturbed music. And SynchroniCities (2012) draws a rhapsodic abundance of heterogeneous thoughts, into which concrete sounds of various trips are incorporated…The field recordings from Cheung's trunks are not in the sense of “musique concrète,” cut into collage, but are either instrumentally transformed or just barely perceptible in the background. Not least, Cheung seeks out the hidden aesthetic qualities of real sounds beyond their cultural function, as acoustic artifacts. The Talea Ensemble, which Cheung himself co-founded and where he is an active pianist, performs brilliantly through the intercultural cosmos of Cheung's music.”

Violist Maiya Papach summoned up her jazz persona for Anthony Cheung’s Assumed Roles, which simmered with piquant timbres from saxophone and electric guitar. In one simple, dreamlike moment, a single note from the viola emerged from a fearsome gong cloud.

On SynchroniCities: “The composer has been able to integrate environmental sound, expunged from any naturalistic connotation: transformed by subtle electronic processing, it becomes an extension of the instrumental timbre.

Cheung’s uses of passing silences—the line breaks themselves—are exquisitely effective in carving out and throwing into high relief units of musical meaning… Other works on the CD bring to mind a kind of updated Impressionism where color carries as much meaning as melody, harmony or dynamics.

Anthony Cheung’s “Assumed Roles,” with the excellent violist Maiya Papach as soloist, burst with character, as the erotically aloof viola part contended with bossy interventions from an oddball ensemble including saxophone and electric guitar.

uncannily perfect orchestration and a stylish melodicism that should welcome any listener. The title piece has a hint of menace and makes me think of a circus, slowed down and grown slightly threatening.

Cheung belongs to a generation that moves freely between live performance and music technology; in the opening concert, given by the New York-based Talea Ensemble, we heard his SynchroniCities (2012).

By means of harp, synthesizer, and a vast ensemble with a battery of percussion, Cheung evoked the god's travels and death in the underworld while paying homage to the privileged place in lore held worldwide by many instruments

Hints of Beethoven’s Sonata in G permeate Mr. Cheung’s piece [Elective Memory]. The first movement, “Aubade, for a Golden Age,” begins with a hazy recollection of Beethoven’s strange opening theme, which is really just a motif, a “birdcall trill,” as Mr. Cheung aptly describes it in a program note.

Described by the composer as a “personal sonic travelogue,” [SynchroniCities] proved to be a playful, quick-witted work, deftly tying the external world of sound to Cheung’s own internal cultural landscape

These are gritty, inventive and wonderfully assured works that blend American wit and sentiment with the fearless abrasiveness of European modernism — a combination that meshes more smoothly than you might imagine.

Katherine] Dowling returned for Anthony Cheung’s 2010 “Roundabouts,” virtuosic clouds of piano resonance, the concert’s emphasis on sound summarized in ringing haze.