Oregon ArtsWatch
Conversations and connections: Darrell Grant with Resonance Ensemble, Andrea Reinkemeyer with In Mulieribus
The famed jazz pianist partnered with the choral ensemble and Portland poet/activist A. Mimi Sei to create “From the Book of Sankofa”; the former Linfield Music Department Chair returns to Oregon for the live premiere of her “Cycles of Eternity,” recorded in 2019.
“It’s always an honor to have a piece written with your voice in mind,” said {Arwen} Myers in an email to conductor {Anna} Song. “Andrea’s writing is incredibly atmospheric, and the solo line feels to me like it bursts out of the ether.”
Datebook, San Francisco Chronicle
SANTA CRUZ — Every summer, orchestral players and music lovers gather at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music for two weeks’ worth of new and recent offerings played at the highest level.
. . . “Water Sings Fire,” a marvelously dark and affecting work by the American composer Andrea Reinkemeyer.
ARTSSF
SANTA CRUZ, CA—Resolute not to let Covid win for the third year in a row, the plucky Cabrillo Festival cobbled together a concert program with half an orchestra to prevent yet another cancellation.
. . . forceful enough to wake the dead and break any jinxes as well.
Eugene Scene
"I was struck most with Water Sings Fire – a 12-minute piece composed by Portland native Andrea Reinkemeyer, who teaches composition and theory at Linfield College. … But this is not the Disney version of The Little Mermaid. The comic book evolution of the story and of Ulla’s character is far darker … Indeed, the music conjures images of pitch-black alleys and desolate landscapes. I could envision Ulla walking this ground, alone at night, and absorbing the motivations of everyone, including herself, that has led to this destruction."
Linfield Magazine
A world-class composer, Reinkemeyer’s most recent commissioned piece, Water Sings Fire, was commissioned for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) by the League of American Orchestras’ 2017 Women Composers Readings and Commissions program, administered by American Composers Orchestra, and supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.
Times Union
“In the tone poem “NaamJai,” Andrea Reinkemeyer drew inspiration from her recent three years of living in Thailand. The most boisterous and ungrounded music of the night, it started off in a bumping, rather brutalist manner. Eventually things settled into a more lyric and consonant expansiveness, highlighted by a sweet, extended quartet for the principal strings.”
Oregon ArtsWatch
“ One of the things that defines Reinkemeyer's music is that it isn't daunted by nature... finding discordant grace where other composers would flinch.” “ As I listened, I discovered a composer who looks to the horizon, but also gazes within, translating private pains and passions into exquisite works.”
