Press
ANNE GOLDBERG-BALDWIN for I Care If You Listen on the ~Nois saxophone quartet album, Is This Nois?:
https://www.icareifyoulisten.com/2020/06/saxophone-quartet-debut-album-asks-is-this-nois/
(…) Similarly, Craig Davis Pinson’s commissioned work, Dismantle, uses multiphonics but takes the album’s energy to a wildly different space. Pinson’s choice to use four alto saxophones instead of the full range of a normal saxophone quartet homogenizes the sound in a manner that allows for disorienting effects, though the work might have lost something in the process of narrowing the range to such a degree. That said, Pinson’s dynamic usage of rhythm transforms the saxophone quartet into a percussion ensemble in the quick attacks and transitions between techniques. While some of the precision could have been stronger, ~Nois brings a fresh energy to this music that gives new life to what a saxophone quartet can become. (…)
Peter Margasak on Best of Bandcamp, Contemporary Classical:
(…) The album opens with the stunning “Albumblatt II,” an excursion into shimmering, ear-fooling multiphonics by Hans Thomalla that’s larded with aerated tones, sour timbres, and slashing lines, while Craig Davis Pinson’s “Dismantle,” played with four alto saxophones rather than the typical array (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone), exploits the rhythmic possibilities of the instrument, with variegated pulsations, shifting note lengths, and some moderate slap tonguing, to forge an abstract sonic landscape populated by a beguiling array of concrete events and atmospheres. (…)
AudPod Blog (Audrey Snyder) on the Is This Nois album:
https://audpodchi.com/audblog/blog/album-write-up-is-this-nois
(…) In Craig Davis Pinson’s Dismantle, a gray, blurry opening sound (like the low hum of an amp) almost immediately gives way to the grooving rhythmic content that defines much of the piece. Dissipating at times into highly rhythmic key clicks and featuring percussive tongue slaps, much of this work is reminiscent of some of the ominous, tense undercurrents of metal music— a strong influence of Pinson’s. I tend to experience the strange feeling during this piece that the stretches of greater rhythmic activity are normal time, and that the passages which feature more long, multiphonic tones are a kind of slowed-down time— a slo-mo. (…)
BoingBoing article on Nyan Cat Variations for chamber ensemble (2012)
https://boingboing.net/2012/02/23/nyan-cat-orchestra-composer-c.html
Laughing Squid article on Nyan Cat Variations for chamber ensemble (2012)
https://laughingsquid.com/the-nyan-cat-variations-musical-variations-of-the-nyan-cat-theme/