Eric Moe's music adroitly navigates the border
between humor and seriousness, crossing the frontier at will, often
without incident. On the Tip of My Tongue is an entertaining an
exciting set of studies for bass clarinet and synthesizer veering
effortlessly between pop vitality and modernist exploration. Tim
Smith gives a wonderful performance of the very difficult bass clarinet
part. O Vos Omnes is a solemn, closely argued piece for vocal quartet
(on a text from the Lamentations of Jeremiah) with beautiful, slow-moving
counterpoint. The Bellefield Singers have a great sound and complete
mastery of Moe's idiom. riprap, for flute, cello, percussion and
piano, is a collection of lively blocks of scherzo-like material
held together by sheer compositional force of will. Sad Steps, for
oboe and piano, is another retelling of the Orpheus legend, concentrating
on the tragic ending, with the oboe playing the roles of Orpheus
himself as well as the mourners. The oboe writing is reminiscent
of Elliott Carter's Oboe Concerto, with its supple lines and frequent
trilling. Moe conceives of this piece as a lament for "the present
condition of art music; voices that can make trees dance and rocks
weep are being drowned out with negligent ease". Fancy Footwork
is a light-hearted (but hardly shallow) companion piece to Sad Steps,
and is part of Moe's own efforts to fight the conditions so dramatically
outlined in that piece. Both of these pieces are given excellent
performances by Marcia Butler, for whom they were composed, with
the composer at the piano. Songs and Dances of the Automobile (FM
synthesis) are, in the composer's words, gritty and humorous tributes
to America's obsession with the car. Moe uses synthesis with artistry
and sensitivity, the technology at his command, instead [of] the
music being driven by the technology - as is often the case in music
using rapidly developing digital instruments. Moe is a fine composer,
and I look forward to hearing more of his music. - Stephen Hicken,
American Record Guide, July/August 1997
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Speculum Musicae's CRI disc of chamber concertos
by emerging American composers is excellent in every respect. The
pieces, by David Sanford, Morris Rosenzweig, and Eric Moe, are challenging
and engaging. - Stephen Hicken, American Record Guide, September/October
1996
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Kicking and Screaming (1994), by Eric Moe, wrapped
things up in a minimum of neurosis and a of gestural interplay.
If Elliott Carter (for the contesting textures andmeters) and Benjamin
Britten (for the interslicing, often solemn motives reminiscent
of sections of both the War Requiem and the Sinfonia da Requiem)
came to mind more than jazz, an impressive tutti of string quartet,
woodwind quintet, and piano against a frantic high-hat confirmed
the work's placement on this Crossover Concert. The Africanesque
boogie of bassoon, cello, and woodblock/cowbell helped, too. Pianist
Julie Steinberg was the impassioned soloist in this anti-concerto
of considerable power. - Mark Alburger, San Francisco Classical
Voice, ́Crossing Over, From Mingus To Moe ́, Sept. 27, 1999
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The Moe piece was clearly the dominant piece
of the Saturday night concert in its blend of free jazz and forward-looking
orchestral thought. It sounded like a piece by Anthony Braxton that
focused on ensemble discipline rather than improvisation. -- Bob
Karlovits, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 17, 2000
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The program concluded with a smashing performance
of On the Tip of My Tongue, a work by one of the Bay Area's old
friends, Eric Moe. Mr. Moe, who received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley,
took a break from his teaching duties at the University of Pittsburgh
to play the synthesizer in tonight's performance. Peter Josheff
accompanied him on the bass clarinet in what was one of the more
rowdy, spirited performances I have recently heard. Mr. Josheff
seamlessly navigated through the four studies of the piece, from
the contrapuntal interjections between the keyboard and the clarinet,
to the raucous finale, in which the bass clarinet erupts in a free
improvisation against the synthesizer's West African percussive
patterns. The work deservedly brought the house down, with the audience
in much appreciation of its quirky, fun attitude. - Belinda L. Reynolds,
20th-Century Music, February 1996
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In fact Moe's Kicking and Screaming, which puts
Aleck Karis' piano and the rest of the group on different rhythmic
waves, is the piece I am most likely to return to, given its energy,
excitement and beautiful high-register string writing. - William
S. Goodfellow, Deseret News, 12/29/1996
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The different Harmonies [of John Cage] are accompanied
by either piano, harpsichord, or organ (according to the individual
character of each piece) by Eric Moe (who, perhaps not so incidentally,
also happens to be a very talented composer in his own right)....A
must for fans of Cage, and a great introduction to his works for
the uninitiated, by two gifted and highly intelligent performers
who bring a vibrant life to these charming pieces. - Jason Uechi,
soundout [ezine], 1995
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"In the final movement...the piano finally succeeds
in persuading the ensemble to join it in a rhythmic field containing
both duple and triple elements." And how exciting and propulsive
this rhythmic field is as it was led on this occasion by the unerring
keyboard technique of Aleck Karis and ten assorted instrumentalists.
This finale is the perfect wind-up to a piece full of interesting
contrasts and convolutions...the Moe elicited the biggest audience
reaction... - Barry L. Cohen, The Music Connoisseur, Spring 1995
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The concluding composition was the highlight
of the evening, "Kicking and Screaming" by Eric Moe, with the composer
at the piano keyboard. This music was often rhapsodic, always dynamic.
It was filled with changing time signatures but for the most part
the pulsations were regular....Moe was a brilliant and dramatic
pianist...this is difficult music and requires more than mere technical
skill. - Clark, NPR radio review, UC Davis, February 11, 1996
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Eric Moe's "Time Will Tell" (1996), a premiere,
had imaginative hues, a sense of sustained argument and other virtues
on its side - a sound, positive, "live" (as against merely willed)
piece. It made a vivid first impression. - Richard Buell, The Boston
Globe, April 23, 1996
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The program concluded with "On the Tip of My
Tongue" for bass clarinet and synthesizer, performed by Berman and
clarinetist Katherine V. Matasy. Its four sections take the two
performers from strict rhythmic unison to screamingly argumentative
discord in a deft exploration of electronic and acoustic sound.
-Michael Manning, The Boston Globe, February 7, 1995
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Speculum Musicae's program in Merkin Concert
Hall was considerably more demanding, but only a nitwit would have
rejected it as academic and inaccessible. True, the new scores by
Wayne Peterson, Elliott Carter, and Eric Moe (Kicking and Screaming,
for piano and nine instrumentalists) have a tough edge, but they
also pay listeners the compliment of inviting active participation.
- Peter G. Davis, New York Magazine, April 3, 1995
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The most interesting of the six [works] were
those of Wuorinen and Moe....Mr. Moe's world premiere is a sextet
for flute (Ms. Rosenfeld), clarinet (Jean Kopperud), violin, viola
(Lois Martin), cello (Ted Mook) and piano, with conductor (Purvis).
The composer once again has produced music with fascinating contrasts
and great energy. - Barry L. Cohen, The Music Connoisseur, Summer
1996
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Eric Moe's "Kicking and Screaming,"
a piano concerto with three movements, was the most ambitious piece
of the evening. Moe played the piano part. His solos were explosive,
sometimes with chords and sometimes with clusters of notes, but the
melody was enunciated and well-connected. With the piano taking the
aggressive role in the first movement, the other instruments were
wmoother, more relaxed and melodic. There were, of course, short motives
like lightning flashes but also pleasant solos and duets - flute and
bassoon; viola against the other strings; clarinet and bassoon. The
jazzy piano melody in the second movement was impressive. In the third
movement, the piano opened quietly, and the other instruments were
more forthcoming. Duets of flute and piano, and viola and piano were
particularly nice. The composer achieved something unusual when aggressive
individual voices merged into a group; what sounded like attempts
to dominate joined to become the music. Toward the close, the piano
and all its partners became strong and, as much as possible, percussive.
- Marilyn Mantay, The Davis [CA] Enterprise, February 15, 1996 |
The redoubtable pianist and composer Eric Moe,
who trained at UC Berkeley, taught there and at San Francisco State,
UC Santa Cruz and now at the University of Pittsburgh as head of composition,
produced a most individual and winning quintet, "Up & At 'Em" (1989).
It's for the unlikely combination of alto flute, English horn, bass
clarinet, viola and piano (Janet Kutulas, Kathleeen Conner, Peter
Josheff, Thomson and Moe himself). The piece takes the listener unexpectedly
from an exuberant, rhythmically bebop-influenced first movement, "Up,"
to an increasingly serious and absorving answering movement, "At 'Em."
At first the music is up and lively, and temperamentally flighty as
well. The rhythm crackles, the line chasing from instrument to instrument.
Single instruments pulse a single pedal tone from time to time, acting
as a tether so it doesn't fly altogether off the page. After a short
bridge representing "&," away we go again, but now finding more solid
dance footing and a sense of progression, harmonic and otherwise.
"Up & At 'Em" is a true foot-lifter. - Robert Commanday, San Francisco
Chronicle, May 10, 1990 |
The Contemporary Players seemed to turn driving,
irregularly metered Stravinsky-like rhythms on their heads in Eric
Moe's percussive riprap, which, not surprising, contained some rap-derived
figures. - Ken Keuffel, Jr., Philadelphia Inquirer, October 19, 1994
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"Impromptu" is a 1960 piece for violin and piano
in three connected sections in which Imbrie brings a forceful personality
to the relationship between instruments. The juxtaposition of formidable
and reflective materials gives the work its urgent backbone, and the
writing calls for playing in which fanciful, agitated and virtuosic
thoughts must be balanced. Violinist Roger Zahab and pianist Eric
Moe, a Pitt faculty member who runs the "Music on the Edge" series,
did an outstanding job defining the work's web of tensions. In "Short
Story" (1982), for solo piano, Imbrie...explores abstract ideas of
brave and still drama. The expressive range is wide, as is the coloristic
palette. Moe gave it a brilliant workout. -Donald Rosenberg, The Pittsburgh
Press, December 11, 1991 |
More obstreperous...was the three-movement Up
& At 'Em by Eric Moe. The first movement (Up) and last (At 'Em) subsist
on jazzy bounce, with bebop the acknowledged core, and the middle
section (&) is officially an interlude, but a fairly lively one. -
Leighton Kerner, The Village Voice, May 29, 1990 |
Eric Moe, whose complete and thorough musicality
is as unmistakable as it is unassuming, played central roles in the
evening's two world premieres - as composer of "Songs and Dances
of the Automobile" (1988) for digitally synthesized sound on
tape, and as pianist in Peter Josheff's "Untended Variations
II"...Concert excerpts from the "soundtrack" of a forthcoming
"living film"/performance art work, the 15-minute "Songs
and Dances" is absorbing music on its own. Its ingratiating sonorities
(the taped sounds have a gurgly, underwater quality) invite the listener
into a complex musical world, which ranges from a discernible homage
to Stravinsky to the evocation of everyday household (make that garage)
noises, over its course finding musical cognates for a broad spectrum
of psychological states and real-world phenomena. At 19 minutes, Josheff's
piano solo nearly outstays its welcome...But Moe's penetrating performance
limned the harmonic events with care and made maximal effect of the
work's occasional stylistic shifts. It remains open to question whether
the piece would sustain interest (which it did Monday) in the hands
of a lesser performer. -Timothy Pfaff, San Francisco Examiner, February
23, 1988 |
The one work I'd choose to hear again was Eric
Moe's cycle "Songs Not So Serious," to four poems by William
Carlos Williams, sung by soprano Anna Carol Dudley, the composer at
the keyboard. The singing line in each was lyrical, musically fascinating,
poetically true and altogether vocal. - Robert Commanday, San Francisco
Chronicle, May 16, 1985 |
...a work moved by dramatic imagery, Eric Moe's
"Byzantium" (1987), for baritone and octet. Moe, the excellent pianist
in the Peterson [work] and conductor for this work, is a gifted composer
currently on the San Francisco State University faculty. "Byzantium"
is a setting of the vivid Yeats poem, its visions and fantasies reeling
in an almost intoxicating sequence. The mystical and elusive, intense
yet rhapsodic mosaic word-pictures of Yeats' language both defy pictorializing
and call for music with emotional overtones. Moe's music produced
a rich and dark fabric with a vocal part that carried a sense of transport
or ecstatic vision. - Robert Commanday, San Francisco Chronicle, April
1, 1987 |
Soprano Anna Carol Dudley provided an impassioned
rendition of Eric Moe's "Songs Not So Serious" (1984), four settings
of poems by William Carlos Williams, with the composer at the piano.
"Portrait of a Lady," with its invocations of Watteau and Fragonard,
captured the text's vague, almost bewildered eroticism... - Joshua
Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, September 28, 1988 |
Electronics also figured in Eric Moe's "Songs
and Dances of the Automobile," which was given its premiere hearing.
These five short tape pieces make a joyful noise, trading heavily
on the slightly cartoonish pings and burbles of basic digital synthesis.
The overall effect is pleasant and occasionally witty... - Joshua
Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, February 24, 1988 |
For his piece [A Whirling and a Wandering Fire],
Moe established a framework that got some dramatic fire going. With
its programmatic associations of wildness and madness, the music gave
off heat that was varied by the languid fluttering of instruments
trying to keep cool in the steamy surroundings. - Marilyn Tucker,
San Francisco Chronicle, March 26, 1986 |
Eric Moe's "Songs Not So Serious" (to four poems
by William Carlos Williams) begins with wide leaps up and swoops down
the scale that do nothing for the texts or for the voice of the singer,
the estimable soprano Anna Carol Dudley. The last two songs, however,
settle into a vein of genuine lyricism, abetted by Moe's imaginative
accompaniments. - Allan Ulrich, San Francisco Examiner, May 16, 1985
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Cellist Laszlo Varga served as special guest
soloist for the premiere of Moe's Variations, with the excellent Karen
Rosenak as his pianistic partner. Here was the best performance of
the program, for what amounted to its most substantial composition.
Varga, always impressive, sounded in top form, fully committed to
this piece - which he commissioned. Like all four of Tuesday's works,
the Variations are dedicated to prolonging serial techniques of the
1960's. In Moe's particular case, one hear[s] echoes of the early
Elliott Carter['s] music, especially the Cello Sonata and First Quartet.
His is a softer grain of dedication to 12-tone music, in other words,
which gives ground to purely expressive communication. - Heuwell Tircuit,
San Francisco Chronicle, October 3, 1985 |
Eric Moe's 1985 "Variations" for cello
and piano contrasted a rich, rather orchestral-sounding opening section
with more extroverted and single-minded music in its concluding two
parts. All eight variations were not equally successful,...but the
slower movements were affecting, the scurrying third variation well
imagined and achieved. - Charles Shere, The [Oakland CA] Tribune,
October 3, 1985 |
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