In Geveb

In The Great Dictionary of Yiddish Language, the dictionary dazzles

"Composer Alex Weiser and librettist Ben Kaplan endow enchantment and glamor... [they] excel at capturing the paradoxical nature of postwar Yiddishism, which was simultaneously petty and visionary, cosmopolitan and parochial, messianic, but also highly pragmatic, lachrymose and uplifting, tragic and comic, and everything in between."

Beyond the Music

The Breath of the City

“...blew me over...Weiser’s settings gently pull the listener into New York’s wondrous world of possibilities, arising in wistful musical meditations on the sleepless city at night… Mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen’s effortless and warm tones perfectly carry the music’s message of devotion, comfort, and love… not just a Jewish love letter to New York, but a prayer as well.”

Oyer.fm

Alex Weiser captures the dusky nights of New York immigrants

“Weiser’s compositions are emotionally nuanced… creating unique sonic worlds to pay heed to each poet’s words… the songs are blurry and impressionistic, capturing the terrifying majesty the poets describe … intricate uses of timbre, voicing and countermelody…”

Culturedarm

Tracks of the Week 30.03.24

“Passionately rendered… a dark lustrous reverie… a beautiful ache, the sublimation of nostalgia which doesn’t merely trade in wistful memories of a burnished past but sketches out and daubs with watercolour old and sometimes long-forgotten places and summons as if traced by a caressing finger the faces of old friends, infusing them with all of the vim and vigour of the present… daring yet sensitive compositions...”

Polityka

Gentle and reflective music

“This piece was a great success — full of noble simplicity and warmth. The soloist was Andrzej Ciepliński, who perfectly immersed himself in the atmosphere.”

Tablet Magazine

Tevye’s Forgotten Daughter

“...gorgeously heartbreaking… 'Tevye’s Daughters' suggests that art, and true words of prayer, can repair even what the law has broken.”

Textura

“Alex Weiser is one of today's most compelling composers; that his debut album 'and all the days were purple,' issued on Cantaloupe Music in 2019, was named a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist intimates as much...bewitching… mesmerizing… flirts with ecstasy.”

Bandcamp

The Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp: July 2023

“[Willow’s Song” is] brief but lush.” ““Shimmer”... blooms out its final gesture into a cycling array of the pattern, shadowed, repeated, and expanded into endlessly morphing permutations that keep yielding new perspectives; certain lines take on a life of their own several minutes into the piece… a fascinating minimalist contrast to Bathgate’s account of the Reich piece, which concludes the album.”

The New York Times

5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now

“...moves slowly and with lavish repetition, its ideas materializing only gradually through a beautiful and, well, shimmering textural haze.”

Textura

Alex Weiser: water hollows stone

“...[the works of 'water hollows stone' are] substantial pieces and ultimately won't be forgotten when the book on Weiser's career is someday written… considerable wealth of ideas and imagination in play... an EP that qualifies as something more than a mere interim report.”

The Whole Note

“...compelling... [water hollows stone is] a very immersive disc.”

Tablet Magazine

Yiddish Album Gets Pulitzer Recognition

“...gossamer sensuality in which music and text join perfectly... Weiser's lushly delicate soundscape hovers over the listener like a dream...”

Tablet Magazine

“...despite my fear of the words ‘modern opera,’ I loved it.”

San Francisco Classical Voice

Leave No Good Idea Behind: Millennial Composers Embrace a Cosmopolitan Style

“...his imagination as an orchestrator is matched by a gift for evocative melody... graceful, richly chromatic vocal melodies soar over hazy instrumental backdrops, offering an imagery-rich, alternative prayer form – ecstatic, yet oddly calm... deliciously wistful...”

American Record Guide

“...reverent and magical... devastatingly beautiful... graceful and robust... intimate and full of solitude...”

Second Inversion

ALBUM REVIEW: ‘And All the Days Were Purple’ by Alex Weiser

“...more than just a meditation on modern Jewish identity and art, ​'and all the days were purple​' deals with universal questions of love, death, struggle, and perseverance through the lens of one culture and its language.”

An Earful

Record Roundup: Contemporary Classical In Brief

“...sounds both fresh and as if it has always existed... there is a palpable sense of stars aligning during this song cycle...”

I Care If You Listen

Alex Weiser Explores the Divine on “and all the days were purple”

“...gently haunting... lush harmonies and carefully crafted structures... personal, expressive, and bold...”

Israeli National Public Radio

“...an amazing flourishing of Jewish culture... stunning, heavenly, marvelous...”

The New Yorker

“...ravishing...”

Textura

"...stakes out startlingly original ground...The heartfelt music on 'and all the days were purple' communicates with a visceral immediacy..."

In Geveb

Sweeping, Bewitching, Divinely Dissonant: A Review of Alex Weiser’s Album and all the days were purple

“...utterly original and exquisitely unsettling... pitch-perfect...”

The Daily Beast

For Some Jews, Yiddish History Is Sanctuary. For Others, It’s ‘Dangerous.’

“...Weiser is only just beginning...”

Tablet Magazine

The Joys of Yiddish Poetry

“...gorgeous... elegantly bringing together his two worlds... the songs on ​'and all the days were purple'​ are painted with deep blues and rich purples...”

New York Music Daily / Lucid Culture

Alex Weiser Resurrects a Brilliantly Obscure Tradition of Jewish Art-Song

“...allusively harrowing... tersely lustrous... crystalline focus... starry, hypnotic...”

I Care If You Listen

Kettle Corn New Music Closes 4th Season with Epitaphs and Fairytales

“...a strong, emerging voice infused with a sophisticated ear and knack for evoking luscious textures and imaginative yet approachable harmonies from the ensemble inspire optimism that this young composer will have much more to say in the coming years.”

The Wall Street Journal

Kids These Days

“...shapely, melody-rich...”

The Brooklyn Rail

“...a cerebral and surprising duet...vacillated from the luminous to the mournful...clashed and coalesced, building toward what Weiser dubbed a “wistful” crest. But the piece truly ended when Chow threw Evans a small smile—a streak of the human beneath this electric, almost otherworldly partnership.”

Feast of Music

Kettle Corn New Music Brings Innovative Art Songs to Spectrum

“Alex Weiser structured his piece, Marks, around the interval of a third. Building suspense with repeated, chime-like thirds, Weiser used the interval as a launching point to explore fresh melodic material, reverse the direction of the third, and introduce soaring vocals before scaling back the texture to foreshadow a more forceful and rhythmic concluding segment—albeit without a punctuated finish. The piece employed word painting, implanting a full, bright chord over the lyric “brightness of moonlight,” and effective interruption, with overlapping hands on the piano and sudden chords or disjointed, jarring high notes cutting into the lulling thirds.”

The New York Times

New Tunes, Old Friends and Poems Set to Song

“Alex Weiser, a New Yorker who studied at Yale University, was drawn to “Travelers,” an enigmatic poem by a friend, Laura Marris, for an a cappella work of the same title, first performed at Yale in 2011. Mr. Weiser captured both the specific and elusive qualities of the poetic imagery in his compelling music, which sometimes breaks down a phrase and repeats the words, as if to get at the meaning. The urgent performance was led by Max Blum, the chorus’s excellent assistant conductor.”