reviews

the comfortable newness of listening
"...shockingly talented..." -- Ricahrd Warp, Oakland Music Examiner [12/15/2010]

strong winds
"...awe-inspiring, reminding us that one does not need the full force of a symphony orchestra or all of the stops pulled out on a pipe organ to evoke the presence of something far greater than oneself. The overall experience was one of exhilaration." -- Stephen Smoliar, San Francisco Classical Examiner [8/21/2010]

the hot new sound on the scene? oh, yes, it is the clarinet
"...Matt Ingalls, a clarinetist, composer, and co-founder of sfSound, a collective playing and promoting contemporary classical music. 'Honestly, I kind of feel sorry for saxophonists right now.' " -- Aaron Britt, New York Times [10/22/2010]

electronic festival puts art in the back seat
"...shapeless sonic tinkering..." -- John Henken, Los Angeles Times [1/15/2001]

women
"...an intense noise clarinet sound. It seemed like it had peaked, but Matt kept escalating things to an unbelievably intense level. My timpanic membranes were creaking and generally freaking out – of course I was loving it. Toward the end he was rapidly trilling between two notes and the room's natural reverb sufficiently blurred the tones so that it sounded like two lines were being played simultaneously. I could more or less discern what was producing the results, but the auditory effect sounded like so much more than that simple explanation suggests. Really incredible. Post-concert conversations confirmed that pretty much everybody was completely blown away by this performance. Why the fuck isn't there an album of this shit?" -- Jacob Felix Heule, Horrible Heaven [3/25/2007]

i go to yet another avant-garde concert
"I didn't like what I heard...reed-splitting hysteria lacked any introspection and sputtered off into some delirious incoherent scream worthy of a spoiled 6-year-old. I was surprised that someone seemingly so hip would try to reproduce the overused blabberings from previous avant-gardes." -- Richard Friedman, All I Know [8/2/2005]

grosse abfahrt: erstes luftschiff zu kalifornien cd review
"The immensely talented (and criminally under-recorded) Ingalls is on magnificent form, sketching delicate melodic lines between the luminous clusters and buzzing clouds..." -- Dan Warburton, Paris Transalantic [7/2007]

tape music festival 2011
"The only piece that made me want to listen to it was Matt Ingalls's poem, which has silences & usually presents only a couple of sounds at a time, making it easier to focus on. It also has a rhythmic element & an over-all symmetrical structure." -- Axel Feldheim, Not For Fun Only [1/9/2011]

sounds about right, and then some
"...a lovely piece on the program that was not silly or aggressive, nor over the top." -- Matthew Cmeil, San Francisco Classical Voice [1/8/2011]

a tradition of change
"The virtuosity in this performance, against a fixed electronic component, was impressive."-- Mark Alburger, 21st Century Music [9/1/2010]

loud and clear
"...like any good improv sounded both spur of the moment and composed, and Ingalls’ easy virtuosity held the audience spellbound for 17 uninterrupted minutes." -- Michael McDonagh, Sequenza21 [9/26/2010]

the mingalls factor
"one of the top five improvising/reading clarinet virtuosos handling both new and improvised music today. He can make the instrument scream like a wall of oscillators or coo like a songbird, in the same breath. -- Scott Rosenberg, Transbay Creative Music Calendar [1/2004]

jack wright signs of life cd review
"one of American reductionism's landmark recordings" -- Dan Warburton, Paris Transalantic [11/2001 & 8/2006]

top 10 things that restored my faith in music
"Matt Ingalls's solo clarinet concert at Tuva Space, for blowing (ahem) away everyone who thought solo improv concerts are boring." -- MPK, San Francisco Bay Guardian [10/2002]

the josh allen deconstruction project at the flux53
"one of the strongest players of the evening." -- Jim Ryan, Transbay Creative Music Calendar [7/2010]

bruckmann/robair/wick :: bran pos/cremaschi/ingalls
"Seeing Matt’s circular tinnitus clarinet covered by other sounds made me want to hear it all by itself again, something I usually swear I will never do right after I just have." -- Suki O'Kane, Transbay Creative Music Calendar [2/2010]

5x5x5 at tom’s place
"solo extended technique from Kyle Bruckmann and Matt Ingalls seared all brain pans." -- Transbay Creative Music Calendar [6/2009]

grosse abfahrt: erstes luftschiff zu kalifornien cd review
"Matt Ingalls' clarinet probes dark depths throughout the tableaux etched by the diminutive noises of his colleagues, mental states altering pitches shuffled along by nagging frequencies, rubbed feedback, squalls of unknown electronics building on event horizons." -- Darren Bergstein, The Squid's Ear [10/9/2008]

free intuition
"delightful, absurd, and wacky" -- Jonathan Russell, San Francisco Classical Voice [11/21/2006]

steve's click picks
"...one of those Bay-Area powerhouses that seems to pop up all over the new-music scene. A phenomenal clarinetist as well as composer and improvisor" -- Steve Layton, Sequenza21 [10/6/2006]

pleasure and pain
"It didn't seem that he was a performer telling his instrument what to do, but rather that he and his instrument melded into a single, unified entity." -- Jonathan Russell, San Francisco Classical Voice [6/26/2006]

no idea festival cd review
"...a fluidity and freshness that many Europeans would do well to pay attention to, all too often snagged as they are in reductionism's net of whooshes and gargles interspersed with long pregnant silences." -- Dan Warburton, Paris Transalantic [4/2005]

no idea festival cd review
"[Kurt] Newman and [Dave] Dove, hook up with Oakland-based clarinetist Matt Ingalls, make Austin’s almost 11½-minute track six the standout on the other CD" -- Ken Waxman, Jazz Weekly [2005]

a bit of this, a touch of that
"The highlight of the first half was the Trio, performed and “composed” by oboist Kyle Bruckmann, clarinetist Matt Ingalls, and alto saxophonist John Ingle....It was at once ear-shatteringly screechingly loud and exhilarating." -- Jonathan Russell, San Francisco Classical Voice [9/28/2004]

solos and interactions
"The best of the concert was its second half, devoted to works by Matt Ingalls and David Sampson and the Ingalls work, "CrusT" for Clarinet and Tape nearly overshadowed the rest of the concert." -- Jeff Rosenfeld, San Francisco Classical Voice [10/6/2002]

scotch, duct, magnetic...transparent!: sf tape music festival
"Ingalls’s endeavors into “cut-up” music were taken to a new plateau in this 2’30” shot to the head, "Scherzo: Allegro molto." His application of “classical” composition formula to such relatively short burst of sound was a feat in itself." -- Thomas Day, Transbay Creative Music Calendar [9/2002]

the wright stuff (feature article on jack wright)
"a veritable Who's Who of the burgeoning US improv scene" -- Dan Warburton, Signal To Noise [Fall/2002]

csound comes of age
"Building on the significant efforts of others, Matt Ingalls's work has made Csound on the Mac far more efficient and powerful." -- Denis Miller, Electronic Musician Magazine [7/2002]

balancing the accessible and the abstruse
"Xenakis' "Anaktoria" (1969)...began with an austere opening horn...then joined by the shrill cry of Matt Ingalls' clarinet and seemed to go on far too long. Ingalls adroitly hurdled the several multi-phonic sections and when called on to crescendo from out of nothingness to a full volume, sounded like something from a distant epoch. This simple and agonizingly slow crescendo after a fury of string activity rang true in the unmarred acoustics of the chapel and was by far the highlight of the piece." -- John Demma Van Hage, San Francisco Classical Voice [6/4/2002]

san francisco electronic music festival review
"Grabbing the tone arm and slamming or scraping the cartridge across vinyl, he produced brutalised blasts of noise that were then resectioned in his computer, with recombinant patterns born of the sonic shards triggered by his keyboard." -- Richard Henderson, The Wire [6/2001]

donkey show cd review
"It’s Matt Ingalls again.... Evidently this boy has learned a few lessons from wizard and elf Malcolm Goldstein in Vermont and Montreal. How could anyone otherwise play the violin this magnificent way? It’s great that Malcolm has a following in the performance practice of gifted musicians." -- Sonoloco [2000]

hear this: matt ingalls
"One of the more ambitious younger-generation improvisers on the scene..." -- Sam Prestiani, SF Weekly [5/5/1999]

sylvano bussotti, live
-- Craig Matsumoto, Memory Select [12/3/2010]

man versus machine
-- Devin Hurd, HurdAudio [7/18/2010]

extended notation and interpretation
-- Devin Hurd, HurdAudio [6/7/2010]

gino robair: i norton cd review
-- Dan Warburton, Paris Transalantic [5/2010]

grosse abfhart: vanity cd review
-- Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes [2/27/2010]

fits and starts
-- Michael McDonagh, Sequenza21 [2/12/2010]

grosse abfhart: vanity cd review
-- Jacob Felix Heule, East Bay Express [2/10/2010]

grosse abfhart: vanity cd review
-- Nate Dorward, Paris Transatlantic [2/2010]

a feast of first impressions
-- Stephen Smoliar, San Francisco Classical Examiner [1/24/2010]

grosse abfhart: vanity cd review
-- Paul D'Gama, All About Jazz [1/21/2010]

deerhoof -- and sfsound -- dig ligeti
-- Christian Carey, Sequenza21 [1/9/2010]

cinema for the ear
-- Aaron Shuman, East Bay Express [1/2/2010]

grosse abfhart: vanity cd review
-- Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure [2010]

i didn't know what time it was
-- Stephen Smoliar, San Francisco Classical Examiner [11/14/2009]

sfSound microFestival
-- Tom Djll, Signal To Noise [Summer/2009]

a story of rats, brandon nickell, sfSound
-- Jacob Felix Heule, Transbay Creative Music Calendar [9/2009]

of new music and "new" music
-- Devin Hurd, HurdAudio [8/12/2009]

odds & ends: sfSound
-- Jacob Felix Heule, Horrible Heaven [8/1/2009]