McCright’s Second Childhood is meant, overall, to evoke some of the memories of hearing, and playing, piano music while growing up, and I can’t say whether it succeeds at that or not but it is transporting, with music that is sophisticated, sincere and a delight to hear. The pieces, all requested by the pianist specifically for this recording, have a clear, simple appeal and a musical, intellectual and emotional maturity that they wear lightly. The most prominent style of music is the Rag, with excellent examples from Gregory Hutter – “Evening Air” – John Halle – “Lullaby” – Daniel Nass – “Rag” is the last of three “Dance Preludes” – and Halle’s concluding “Second Childhood.” The Rag is one of the great American musical styles, woven like a secret code through so much of the popular and art music that has come since its formulation in the late 19th century. It reaches deep into the imagination, in a place where we hold our innocent ideals about life, what we see in it and wish from it, and especially how we see our lives as Americans. It’s not dead, but has been keeping a low profile in contemporary times, mainly through the wonderful Rags of William Bolcom. The ones McCright plays are fine, balancing a specific devotion to the form and style with a great deal of quiet, wistful grace, especially in Hutter’s piece, and some well-managed compositional deconstruction with Halle. McCright plays them with an ideal feel for the rhythms and voicings. Nass’ other preludes are witty examples of the “Waltz” and the “Tango.” There are other dances in Laura Caviani’s “Jazz Etudes,” “Blues,” “Tango la Falda” and “Matt’s Boogie,” and these pieces, like Bruce Stark’s &ldbquo;Five Preludes for Piano,” nail the exact balance between style and composition; they capture the qualities of the popular musics while being finely made, free of the sense of slumming that too many composers cannot escape when they try their hand at popular forms. Some of Stark’s material is as good a composed depiction of what Keith Jarrett does as I’ve heard. The most compositionally abstract piece is Kirsten Broberg’s “Constellations,” which takes the idea of a Debussy Prelude and strips it down to it’s almost mechanical essence, the fingers latching onto the most fundamental component and running through it almost to fatigue, but not quite. It’s what a child might do with a single passage within a larger piece, one that they find particular fascination in. A fine recording, perhaps the result is less a depiction of childhood than how we, as adults, look back at what we remember and cherish but can never recreate.

George Grella – The Big City CD Review
September 27, 2010

 

“Pianist Matthew McCright’s recital disc on the Innova imprint has been given a cute but apt ‘in house’ descriptor: “Kinderszenen aus Northfield.” Indeed, the Carleton College professor and new music advocate has assembled a disc of new works which simultaneously channel and elevate the “music for childhood/music about childhood” genre... McCright’s detailed and engaging renditions amply demonstrate that pieces for intermediate performers, as well as those for advanced pianists who are channeling memories of childhood, can still make for interesting listening and prove themselves of considerable substance.”

Christian Carey – Sequenza 21 and Chamber Musician Today
September 22, 2010

 

“The Maverick Pianist, Matthew McCright...”

The New Yorker Magazine concert listings
September 21, 2010

 

“On his new solo album Second Childhood, Minnesota pianist Matthew McCright (who’s at Merkin Hall on 9/25) plays with nuance, fluidity and counterintuitivity on a diverse and eye-opening collection of new works by midwestern composers. He gives these pieces plenty of breathing room: it’s an album of melody and subtleties rather than overt technical prowess (although McCright has plenty of that). His presence is unobtrusive except when it needs to be more aggressive, and then it is, sometimes when least expected yet very welcome. Bruce Stark’s Five Preludes for Piano opens it: moody echoes of Satie with occasional jarring upper register atonal accents; an austere (one is tempted to say stark) moonlit miniature; a rippling, circular work that straddles calm and apprehension; a not quite heroic theme and a rapidfire passacaglia of sorts. Evening Air, by Gregory Hutter is an insistent nocturne: McCright’s extra-precise articulation and deft sense of dynamics downplay its occasional ragtime flavor. The real gem here is Constellations, by Kirsten Broberg. This delightfully evocative partita artfully introduces icy, nebulously related clusters and after some otherworldly upper-register explorations watches the universe expand and cool down even further. John Halle is represented by two pieces, a ragtime-flavored lullaby and a straight-up rag that cleverly interpolates other, darker styles. Daniel Nass’s Dance Preludes expand, often eerily, on tango, ragtime and a heavily camouflaged waltz. The most playful material here is by Laura Caviani: her jazz etudes include an inventive series of variations on a saloon blues theme; an understatedly intense, chromatically charged tango and a boogie-woogie number, the only one of this vast range of styles that seems to be unfamiliar terrain for McCright. In its own subtle and emotionally attuned way, it’s a real tour de force. It’s out now on Innova.”

Alan Young – Lucid Culture
September 15, 2010

 

“Watch out Osma, here comes Matthew McCright. A top candidate for “Minnesotan of the Year”, McCright has it all: lives in Minneapolis, teaches at Carleton, and travels the world performing classical and contemporary piano works. On Saturday, September 25th, McCright will take the stage to introduce the east coast (yes, it is the east coast premier) to new piano works from the The Great State.”

Rapahel Golberstein – Minnesota Culture Club
September 15, 2010

 

" Another solo piece, Paul Dresher’s Blue Diamonds, was played by Matthew McCright on piano. Unfazed by the unceasing flow of notes, McCright performed admirably, with impressive stamina for such a lengthy piece. "

Beeri Moalem - San Francisco Classical Voice
August 14, 2009

 

"This ensemble, organized by Russell and McCright, delivered that effect with all the compulsion it deserved. McCright also performed the Dresher “Blue Diamonds” piano solo, an extended single-movement work lasting almost one-third of an hour...the Debussy-like touch that McCright brought to this performance...This is a work that deserves more than one listening, and nothing would please me more than opportunities to hear other pianists add this work to their repertoires."

Stepher Smoliar - San Francisco Classical Examiner
August 15, 2009

 

"I especially enjoyed the broad range of colors and general sensibility you bring to the music. The CD has a sense of humor, of dance and imagery that gives it life."

Bruce Stark (Tokyo, Japan)
May 12, 2009

 

"The performers featured were Jennifer Wilhelms and Matthew McCright, a classical duo who have numerous years under their belts performing together. The evening’s performance from the duo was a surprising range of music going well beyond my expectations in terms of both variety and performance."

Trent Townsend-Island Sand Paper (Fort Myers)
January 16, 2009

"Its opening weekend saw the YLMF get off to a cracking start. There was nothing here to daunt anyone apprehensive about "modern day music" - the festival’s subtitle - but plenty to set pulses racing.

To judge by Matthew McCright’s piano recital on Saturday and Eleanor Meynell’s lunchtime song-recital yesterday, there are further treats in store this week.
Barely 36 hours off the plane from Minneapolis, McCright was still right on the ball. He warmed up with the shifting patterns of John Adams’s China Gates and the ruminative First Piano Prelude by Garrett Sholdice, newly revised. There was more gripping minimalism from Philip Glass and a dreamily romantic Simone’s Lullaby by Terry Riley. Ailís Ní Ríain contributed Into The Sea Of Waking Dreams - five thoughtful miniatures with brief angry bursts.

But it was six of Steve Crowther’s hugely invigorating Morris Dances that most caught the imagination. Based on the fast, swinging cross-currents of its Enigma theme, and ed by personal friends, it flitted, flirted and flowed, with a brief elegiac interlude.

The stupendous sweep of Frederic Rzewski’s Four North American Ballads filled McCright’s second half. His use of politically-inspired blues provide an entertaining thread. But the blackly remorseless Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues make Bartok’s Allegro Barbaro sound like child’s play. McCright’s energy was always coloured by insight."

- Martin Dreyer- York Late Music Festival/York Press (UK) (YLMF)
National Centre For Early Music
June 5, 2007

 

"The two main evening concerts, given by Minneapolis-based visiting pianist Matthew McCright, stood out for the focus and clarity of their delivery. His programmes included Frederic Rzewski’s De Profundis, a haunting setting of Oscar Wilde for vocalising, whistling, singing and speaking pianist, and the first performance of Sholdice’s Etude, which, at over 95 minutes, must have gone straight into the record books as the longest piano piece by an Irish composer.

The most notable of the festival’s premieres were both by women, Judith Ring’s electroacoustic Pre_per_form For Beau Stocker sounding like an electronic extravaganza for über percussionist, and Linda Buckley’s Zone (solo piano, McCright), which toyed successfully with a kind of Ligeti-like mechanism."

- Michael Dervan- Irish Times (Dublin)
November 2006.

 

"Matthew McCright provided a carefully chosen progamme on Saturday which gave us a glimpse of what can be achieved when post-modernism avoids the meaningless temptation to write in one single voice from the past (as if revealing a lost Tchaikovsky score for example)…….However Rzewski’s De Profundis really did work while doing this, carried along by the powerful and faithful interpretation of McCright; this was the best piece of the festival. Invention by Carolyn Yarnell and Zone by Linda Buckley were well crafted, satisfying pieces, fitting into the programme without being post-modern in the same way."

John McLachlan- New Work Notes, Journal of Music in Ireland,
January 2007

 

"The most poetic moment came with the performance of Lucier’s Nothing is Real, in which pianist Matthew McCright recorded the melody lines of "Strawberry Fields Forever" onto a miniature tape machine located inside a teapot. After he was finished playing, McCright opened and closed the teapot as the melody played back. Sounding more like a simulacrum than a faithful reproduction, it seemed to memorialize a by-gone era. The simplicity of construction in Nothing is Real and Lucier’s other pieces reveal and revel in an astonishing level of acoustic enchantment, exploring the sonic possibilities of electronic music performances and the spaces in which they are performed.

Justin Schell, March 2006 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art-NEWMUSICBOX Magazine

 

"The piano soloist was Matthew McCright, a very talented young man who is beginning to make a name for himself. His style is authoritative with a good range of motion …the very rich sound was attained under the talented fingers of the soloist."

Jerry Stephens, November 2004, Youngstown Vindicator, Youngstown, OH

 

"The ensemble and musical intelligence were on the highest artistic level."

Sandra Rivers of the CCM (Cincinnati) performance by the
New Century Piano Duo
January 2001

 

"I was deeply impressed by the virtuosity and musicality of his playing."

John Walker, former curator, Young Artist Concert Series -
The Shadyside Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh
March 1997