Press

Some comments about my music:

Timberbrit:

"The audience is reminded of Spears’s music and lyrics, but the fast pacing of pop becomes dark and weighted. . . The stretching of both the music and story prolongs Spears’s destruction and amplifies her downfall, but seeing it happen in slow motion makes it all the more tragic.”

"A PR person's wet dream. . . The lives of former Mouseketeers sure make for ripe melodrama."

"[With Timberbrit], our city can lay claim to a new cultural offering."

"[Timberbrit] dares to imagine an imaginary reconciliation between an out-of-control Britney Spears and a contrite Justin Timberlake."

"The opera easily transcends its conceptual calculations and becomes an engrossing, intriguing human drama. Human vocals waft over a wave of slowed-down chords, accented by crashing drums and keyboard effects. It has the airy eeriness of a David Lynch film score, yet not as doom-laden. . . The grandeur and polish bear the patience and intelligence of a classical score, but the humanity and desperation are pure pop. . . Just as few fans of Verdi's Camille, Puccini's Madama Butterfly or Mozart's Marriage of Figaro have read the books and stories on which those operas are based, someday when people have forgotten about the real Britney Spears, they may still be enthralled by the tragic electronically fueled slo-mo musical meltdown of Timberbrit."

"Listening to [Timberbrit's] Britney singing like a record on the wrong speed, you feel like either she must be on the drugs, or you are. . . There are moments of overwhelming force in the work. Like when Justin and Britney's voices are nearly drowned out by the guitarist's wall-of-sound chords and the apocalyptic drums. Or the duet when Justin's voice slides above Britney's in a piercing falsetto as they proclaim their love for each other."

Also see the interview with me in the Toronto Star, the preview article by Adam Rathe in the Brooklyn Paper, Alex Ross's Timberbrit shout-out, and a wonderfully scathing review by a bicoastal blogger.

Odradek:

"[Odradek] is clearly not hopelessly Kafkaesque. Filled with mood changes, from wild syncopated sections to hazy chordal atmospheres, it led the listener toward one of the most cacophonous concert conclusions in recent memory."

“Cooper’s goal was to create something intelligible out of seemingly random elements, and in this he succeeded admirably.” 

“Full of startling, spastic outbursts. . , it encompasses a daringly wide stylistic range, with touches of Schoenberg and Debussy rubbing against postminimal harmonies.  The brashness, however, is Cooper's own; one of the few pieces on the program to incorporate humor (some deliciously ridiculous contrabassoon solos), it also contains some of the most deafening unamplified sounds I have ever heard.”

Not Just Another Piece for Solo Bass Drum:

“Unruly, goofy, yet oddly poignant.”           

Postlude:

“Perhaps [one of] the most integrated of the pieces here, purely in the sense of matching the voice of the singer to that of the cello. . . [it] employs ostinati on the cello against sustained tones in the voice - a pleasant combination.”