...takes the audience on an operatic journey that at once
exalts one of the most common dramas of these modern times and almost explodes it to parody.”
- Washington City Paper
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Electric guitarist D.J. Sparr's Jimi Hendrix-inspired solos were stylishly played. Spirituals combined with Sparr's impressive guitar picking in "Chicken Pickin" to bring the work to a powerful, momentum-building close. - The Birmingham News*****************************
The curtain raiser was D. J. Sparr’s “Dacca: Decca: GaFfA” (2008), a bright, cheerfully tonal piece in which attractive melodies shared among bells, a xylophone and a pair of antiphonally placed steel-string acoustic guitars dance around a bed of languid string chords. This pop-inflected piece might have seemed out of place in an orchestral program a decade ago, but it suits the boundary-erasing spirit of today’s new-music world. - The New York Times*****************************