08-27-20

David Allen, New York Times, May 2013

There are new-music ensembles. And then there is the adventurous and excellent Locrian Chamber Players, a group that plays only works written in the last 10 years.

08-27-20

The New Yorker, May 2014

There are dozens of small-scale, long-running new-music organizations in New York, but this remains one of the most appealing; there are always just enough pieces by major composers to balance out the minor ones, and the setting—atop Riverside Church, with glass doors opening onto a parapet overlooking the Hudson—has a touch of class.

08-27-20

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times, August, 2017

From their perch high up in the tower of Riverside Church, the Locrian Chamber Players continue to present one of the most consistently interesting new-music series — and when they say new, they mean it: Only works written in the past 10 years make the cut.

08-27-20

Steve Smith, The New Yorker, May, 2019

The Locrian Chamber Players specialize in performing works less than a decade old—which means that this invaluable fifteen-year-old group can’t even revisit the pieces with which it got started. But finding worthy repertoire has never been a problem, and regular contact with fresh ideas lends confidence and a buzzy energy to the ensemble’s performances.

08-27-20

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times, August 2014

The neo-Gothic tower of Riverside Church plays refuge to a number of rare, if no longer actively endangered, species. Exhibit A: Henry and Henrietta, the pair of peregrine falcons that nest on a ledge high above Morningside Heights. Exhibit B: the Locrian Chamber Players, one of the most uncompromising contemporary-music ensembles in the city.

The group, which was founded in 1994 and counts composers among its ranks, takes a hard line in its definition of what qualifies as contemporary music: Anything older than 10 years is out. It’s also strict with its audiences, who are given no program notes to guide them until after the performance. But when it comes to musical taxonomies, the Locrian Chamber Players offer a generous embrace to a wide spectrum of sounds. The only true common denominator at Thursday evening’s concert of works by five different composers was the high standard of playing.

02-23-10

Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, August, 1999

“You have to admire the young musicians in the Locrian Chamber Players, not only because they devote themselves exclusively to music that is less than a decade old, but because they put their own compositions on the line as well, offering them alongside works by more established composers.”

02-23-10

Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, May, 2013

“The Locrian Chamber Players is an ensemble that only plays music written within the last ten years, and so these fine musicians are considered new-music champions. In the days when the great Classical works were being written, such devotion to the new was the norm; a group that concentrated on music older than ten years would have seemed quite odd. But given the timidity of most chamber ensembles, the Locrian’s adventurousness is all the more valuable.”