Nicholas Underhill: Light and Sirius
available at Capstone Records

Three Pieces for Piano was written for Nicholas Underhill, who gave the first performance in Weill Recital Hall, NYC.

Gary Philo's Three Pieces are compact musings on atmosphere and poetic gesture, with rhythmic surprises, sudden silences and lyrical sighs to keep the movements in arresting motion.

Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone

The Cleveland Chamber Collective: Debuts
available at Amazon.com

Orchestral Miniatures Volume 5
available at Amazon.com and from MMC Recordings

Spring Music

Read a review from

From 21st Century Music, January 2003, volume 10, number 1
(David Cleary)

Spring Music by Gary Philo manages to be showy
while avoiding . . . more predictable approaches, opting instead for an unusual juxtaposition of Impressionist and Expressionist writing.

Philo's aforementioned style mix is handled expertly well, somehow managing to let its two approaches coexist smoothly. And the work's structural sense is both expertly outlined and unusual.

From ArkivMusic.com:

This disc delivers a postmodern listening experience. Written by U.S.-trained composers, nearly all of these orchestral pieces, in duration the musical equivalent of the short story, reflect some well-known strain in 20th century orchestral music. We hear perhaps unintended reminiscences of the fugue theme from Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste in Whitman Brown's 'Zudnick,' and of Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' and of John Adams' "The Chairman Dances" from 'Nixon in China' in David Stock's 'Fast Break.' Persis Parshall Vehar's 'Light/Lux/Svietlo' intriguingly creates the sound of an imaginary Mahler waltz arranged by Ravel, and Gary Philo's superb 'Spring Music' exhibits thematic and orchestral control that brings to mind the ease and aplomb of Richard Strauss at his best.