For Press inquiries please contact:
Amanda Sweet
amanda [at] bucklesweet.com
347. 564. 3371
Amanda Sweet
amanda [at] bucklesweet.com
347. 564. 3371
Reviews
"Joseph C. Phillips Jr. creates music that sounds classical, funky and sometimes cinematic. ...The music that Joseph C. Phillips Jr. makes is hard to categorize." — NPR
“ ...very clearly 21st-century music [incorporates] a broad range of styles while being ultimately beholden to none.”
— Frank Oteri, New Music Box
— Frank Oteri, New Music Box
“A hypnotic rhythmic undertow guides his music and is informed by influences from the world of literature, philosophy...”
— John Murph, The Root
— John Murph, The Root
“What lovely, graceful and heartfelt music Joe Phillips composes. He already has something very special that is uniquely his own. His textures are unique and his compositions unfold naturally and patiently. [....] I might add that he's an absolutely beautiful conductor. I love to watch him. And, this is just the beginning. Joe will do many great things—I have no doubt.”
— Maria Schneider
— Maria Schneider
The Grey Land
"Mr. Phillips can be heard rendering these varied cultural signals into a heterogenous work of art — but one that has a coherence the world often lacks. And this, in the end, seems like his latest understanding of 'the digging of everything.' Sometimes that digging may involve appreciation; at other points, it is simply a process of documentation, or of profitably trying to sort one’s own complex feelings."
— Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times, "In the Wake of Ferguson, a Style-Blurring Album"
— Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times, "In the Wake of Ferguson, a Style-Blurring Album"
Joseph C. Phillips Jr.’s The Grey Land is a stirring, stylistically varied mono-opera that draws on its composer’s reflections on being Black in contemporary America.
— Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times "The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020"
— Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times "The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020"
"The Grey Land...[Joseph C Phillips Jr's] most ambitious, and possibly most important work yet."
— John Schaefer, New Sounds, "Top 10 of 2020" (#4)
— John Schaefer, New Sounds, "Top 10 of 2020" (#4)
“The Grey Land is rich with allusions to tragedy, hope, and resistance…With his stirring meditation on racial injustice, Phillips confronts a classical tradition that has often been used to ennoble its white subjects to the exclusion of others.”
— Oussama Zahr, The New Yorker
— Oussama Zahr, The New Yorker
"That the album arrives at yet another flashpoint in U.S. history elevates The Grey Land from a breakthrough piece to a necessary statement."— Steve Smith, Night After Night
"...the overall arc of [The Grey Land] is well-conceived and promises to be a stunning and complex multimedia portrait of Black America when it is able to be fully realized."
— Amanda Cook, I Care If You Listen,
"Editor's Picks: 2020 Contemporary Classical Albums"
— Amanda Cook, I Care If You Listen,
"Editor's Picks: 2020 Contemporary Classical Albums"
"Overall, The Grey Land depicts a dramatic and tragic story of modern Black America well, with glimmers of hope and Afrofuturism sprinkled about. The composition as a whole is brassy and triumphal; solemn and evocative; expressive and harmonious…The Grey Land not only sits in sorrow and unpacks injustice, but also provides a lens into what Blackness looks like without oppression and the constant threat of death.
— Jasmine Ivanna Espy, I Care If You Listen,
"The Grey Land: Joseph C. Phillips Jr. Captures the Essence of Modern Black America"
— Jasmine Ivanna Espy, I Care If You Listen,
"The Grey Land: Joseph C. Phillips Jr. Captures the Essence of Modern Black America"
"The Grey Land... is one man, with an extraordinary grasp of history and the present, attempting to make sense of the world in which he lives and expressing it a kaleidoscope of emotions and sound."
— Rick Perdian, Seen and Heard International
— Rick Perdian, Seen and Heard International
"...the sympathy and sincerity of Joe Phillips's haunting The Grey Land..."
—George Grella, The Brooklyn Rail, "Opera in Our New World"
—George Grella, The Brooklyn Rail, "Opera in Our New World"
"This is Joe Phillips time. He’s a singular composer who uses beauty and suggestions of the pleasure of pop music to surreptitiously and incontrovertibly reveal the essential Africa-American roots underlying everything we love in American culture. Eight years in gestation, The Grey Land is a multimedia mono-drama... and is the story of one Black mother’s experiences making her way through American society across 'the intractable triumvirate of race, class, and power.'"
—George Grella, The Brooklyn Rail
—George Grella, The Brooklyn Rail
"[The Grey Land's] impact is considerable and does not evaporate once the basic statement has been made, for a creative structure has been married to a committed message."—James Manheim, All Music
Changing Same |
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"The tail end of August blessed us with a high-octane pack of new classical releases that are powerful enough to propel us beyond the last lazy days of summer and into a new season. Topping our list of the best classical albums this month is Changing Same, a new album from composer Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., and his ensemble, Numinous."
— Seth Colter Walls, Rhapsody
— Seth Colter Walls, Rhapsody
"More sympathetic, and really quite lovely and evocative, is Joe Phillips’s Changing Same (New Amsterdam). This is a subtle and remarkable work. Phillips has made music that places the style and meaning of rhythm and blues into the context of contemporary classical music. Stuff like that is usually embarrassing to hear, but Phillips makes it work, and makes it sound easy and natural. His bearing witness is by example—a black composer taking black popular music (with its own important history of political and social consciousness) and placing it, without comment, on an equal footing with the forms and structures of the classical tradition. It is no exaggeration to say this is on par with Mahler making symphonies with music his peers thought of as vulgar, and it is just as successful."
— George Grella, The Brooklyn Rail
— George Grella, The Brooklyn Rail
"...one swooping mélange of sophisticated juxtapositions. This will never get old. The orchestral scores here are kinetic and full of surprises."
— Mike Greenblatt, Classicalite
— Mike Greenblatt, Classicalite
"...throughout a creative freshness that marks this music as occupying a world on its own..."
— Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
— Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
"This music has a rustic, dream-like quality and doesn't quite sound like any other jazz, rock or even new music ensemble."
— Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
— Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
The Loves of Pharaoh (BAM Next Wave Festival)
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"[At BAM's Next Wave Festival] was The Loves of Pharaoh, a mostly restored silent film from Ernst Lubitsch, presented with original live music from Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and his ensemble, Numinous. It was the music that made it work…Phillips’s music flows smoothly and richly. While his previous work has a strong flavor of Minimalism, his language in this work is more Romantic and expressive…Phillips does two things I admire: He never mocks the picture, and he never limits the music to the obvious emotion of a scene...Phillips maintains a cooler, more sympathetic, and more humane voice."
— George Grella, The Brooklyn Rail "Though I was thoroughly engrossed in Lubitsch's mise-en-scene I also found Phillips's score [to The Loves of Pharaoh] to be totally riveting."
— Frank Oteri, NewMusicBox |
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Vipassana
“…[Vipassana] is certainly head music for the cerebral, but it’s a dandy listening date for people that really like their alternative stuff from left field. [....] Wild and worth it.”
— Midwest Record Review
— Midwest Record Review
“Phillips' writing is brilliant, and the ensemble performs it with clarity and passion. Count me as a believer.”
— Ted Gioia
— Ted Gioia
“Musically, this quartet of stylish and provocative pieces… succeeds in being the sum of its parts and to illustrate his program, which is an unusual one: part symphonic, part spiritual exegesis… Vipassana is never less than likeable, is sincere in intent, and is greatly enjoyable to listen to; Joseph C. Phillips Jr. is a young composer to watch.”
— All Music Guide
— All Music Guide
Interviews
"In the Wake of Ferguson, a Style-Blurring Album"
interview/feature with Seth Colter Walls for The New York Times
interview/feature with Seth Colter Walls for The New York Times
NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday
interview with Rachel Martin (first aired, August 23rd, 2015)
interview with Rachel Martin (first aired, August 23rd, 2015)
"Balancing Act"
interview/feature on NewMusicBox
ClassicalTV
interview/article (about The Loves of Pharaoh & 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival)
ClassicalTV
interview (about Ecstatic Music Festival 2013)
The Glass
interview (about The Loves of Pharaoh & 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival)
The Glass
interview (about Changing Same & Ecstatic Music Festival 2013)
Sequenza21
(about The Loves of Pharaoh & 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival)
"Classical Music's Latest Bloomer"
(interview on The Root)
interview/feature on NewMusicBox
ClassicalTV
interview/article (about The Loves of Pharaoh & 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival)
ClassicalTV
interview (about Ecstatic Music Festival 2013)
The Glass
interview (about The Loves of Pharaoh & 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival)
The Glass
interview (about Changing Same & Ecstatic Music Festival 2013)
Sequenza21
(about The Loves of Pharaoh & 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival)
"Classical Music's Latest Bloomer"
(interview on The Root)
Features
November 21, 2020
New York Times
"In the Wake of Ferguson, a Style-Blurring Album"
by Seth Colter Walls
New York Times
"In the Wake of Ferguson, a Style-Blurring Album"
by Seth Colter Walls
Changing Same featured in Rhapsody's Classical Diversity: Today's Voices in Composition October playlist
"We still don't have complete gender equity or consistent racial diversity in our formal concert halls today, although things are improving. In recent months and years, we’ve seen a clutch of albums organized around works by artists from many backgrounds. For the latest examples, take two recent, thrilling releases from the New Amsterdam label: one from the composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, the other from composer Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., and his Numinous ensemble."
http://www.rhapsody.com/blog/post/classical-diversity-todays-voices-in-composition
"We still don't have complete gender equity or consistent racial diversity in our formal concert halls today, although things are improving. In recent months and years, we’ve seen a clutch of albums organized around works by artists from many backgrounds. For the latest examples, take two recent, thrilling releases from the New Amsterdam label: one from the composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, the other from composer Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., and his Numinous ensemble."
http://www.rhapsody.com/blog/post/classical-diversity-todays-voices-in-composition
Changing Same is #1 in Top 10 Classical albums for September 2015 from Rhapsody!
"The tail end of August blessed us with a high-octane pack of new classical releases that are powerful enough to propel us beyond the last lazy days of summer and into a new season. Topping our list of the best classical albums this month is Changing Same, a new album from composer Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., and his ensemble, Numinous."
http://www.rhapsody.com/blog/post/top-10-classical-albums-september-2015
"The tail end of August blessed us with a high-octane pack of new classical releases that are powerful enough to propel us beyond the last lazy days of summer and into a new season. Topping our list of the best classical albums this month is Changing Same, a new album from composer Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., and his ensemble, Numinous."
http://www.rhapsody.com/blog/post/top-10-classical-albums-september-2015
For Press inquiries please contact:
Amanda Sweet
Amanda [at] bucklesweet.com
347. 564. 3371
Amanda Sweet
Amanda [at] bucklesweet.com
347. 564. 3371