Gernot Wolfgang

[ALPINE STORY is] the work of Gernot Wolfgang, a remarkable mid-career musician. Born in Austria in 1957, Wolfgang has been based in Los Angeles for 10 years, and his music also seems to be from several places at once ... If Wolfgang's title conjures something like Strauss' "Alpine Symphony," guess again. This 14-minute tone poem moves between old Europe and today's Los Angeles, bridging moody percussion with repeating string figures. A timpanist pounds out riffs the strings make deeper. Cymbals are stroked with violin bows until they scream. Marimbas and vibraphones clang and bong while a snare drummer browses between jazz and rock. Strings start plucking. Everything seems to circle back to the opening figures, but then it gets more interesting. It's over too soon. "Alpine Story" might not be a linear narrative, but it's full of surprises and accessible on several levels. The Arroyo Grande audience got to be the first in the United States to hear it.

... a work successfully traversing that risky bridge between jazz and classical, with integrity intact ... the piece - an impressive first orchestral effort for the composer - deftly moves across stylistic boundaries, alternating suggesting the terse harmonic language of contemporary classical music and such jazz influences as Gil Evans' work with Miles Davis and the general musical thought train of Austria's greatest gift to jazz, Joe Zawinul. It opens and closes with murmuring, microtonal string activity, crisply puntuated by syncopated lines and active percussion parts ... a last emphatic climactic finale is a tease, followed up by a trickling residue of soft sonic activity, drifting into the ether.

This is another exciting composition for bassoon from the pen of the incredibly gifted composer, Gernot Wolfgang ... The 13-minute work is a truly impressive piece of contemporary music and a very significant contribution to the bassoon literature of the 20th Century. There is no doubt in my mind that Wolfgang is a major composer of our times. His style is that of greatly expanded tonality - more into the atonal range - but uniquely melodic and rhythmic without being overly pointillistic and disjunct ... It is perhaps one of the most eloquent examples of what composer Gunther Schuller called "third-stream-music", combining elements of jazz and classical in a unique manner and style ... This is a wonderful composition, worthy of serious consideration for performance by the best bassoon soloists of our time ...

[Continuum IV - Cascades] is a gently dissonant, bright and aggressively amiable piece, alternately jazzy and pastoral.

... [Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra music director Jeffrey] Kahane was back just in time to unveil the latest LACO Sound Investment commission, a 14-minute tone poem by Austrian-born, Los Angeles-based composer Gernot Wolfgang called "Desert Wind". Talk about a fortuitous title. Desert Winds have been very much on our minds lately, what with the ominously early arrival of the Santa Anas accompanied by wildfires in Griffith Park and Gorman. Wolfgang's arresting, jazz- drenched new score seemed to capture at once the realities and myths of Los Angeles during fire season. The winds themselves were exactingly summoned up by the swirling strings and horns, with a snare drum rat-ta-tatting away. At other times, the strings were caught in a state of sustained unresolved tension, animated by chugging grooves in the percussion. There was a jazzy French horn solo for Richard Todd and a tricky oboe solo for Allen Vogel, who stood when they played as if in a big band. The sustained string tension and percussion punctuations reminded one of the music of another transplanted local notable, William Kraft. This piece could also serve as the score for an archetypical 1950s L.A. detective thriller - music that's somehow cool and sultry at the same time, suggesting danger in the palm tree paradise. Wherever your imagination takes you, Wolfgang provides the fuel - Desert Wind ought to have legs beyond its premiere.