ALBUQUERQUE TRIBUNE:
“…in the sextet's piece "The Glam Seduction, the 1980s rock music of Eddie Van Halen meets the instrumentation of Niccolo Paganini, a 19th-century violinist who was known for stunning, fast fingered compositions… The result - Paganini on coke."
(Performance by eighth blackbird. April 2004)

CARROLL COUNTY TIMES:
"His name sounds like an aggressive vinyl scratcher who’s always ready to throw down in a rap battle."
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(Performance by the Carroll Concert Band. March 2007)

Daily Gazette, Schenectady, NY:
"Sparr’s “Ahi va!” is a busy and rather noisy work that brings to mind the running of the bulls with lots of clapping, string strumming and trumpet fanfares. With all of that, it still didn’t have enough of a Flamenco flavor.
(Performance by Albany Symphony's Dogs of Desire. May, 2008)

Detroit Free Press, Detroit, MI:
"In case you've missed one of the most exciting developments on the local classical music scene in years, metro Detroit finally has a contemporary music ensemble that takes no prisoners.

New Music Detroit, a cooperative group that made its debut last year, has been turning heads with its ferociously energetic and virtuoso performances of music that's almost never heard in metro Detroit -- everything from downtown idioms like minimalism and its offshoots to the gnarly experiments of the European avant-garde, free jazz, rock hybrids and eclectic post-everything music so new the ink is still wet.

The group -- whose founding core includes players mostly in their 20s and 30s and several members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra -- made a big splash with a 12-hour marathon last summer that launched it into orbit. On Saturday the ensemble rolls out "Strange New Music II," its second annual marathon. Some four dozen musicians will perform music by about two dozen composers, ranging from Steve Reich, and Terry Riley to Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio and such bright lights of a new generation as Nico Muhly, Marc Mellits and D.J. Sparr."
(Performance by New Music Detroit. September, 2008)

Grosse Point News, Grosse Pointe, MI:
"Classical music that combines innovation and tradition is featured in New Music Detroit's 2nd annual 12-hour new music marathon, "Strange Beautiful Music II."

Held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the performance will take place from noon to midnight, Saturday, Sept. 6. A schedule detailing performers and pieces will be distributed and listeners can come and go as they please. Tickets will be available at the door for $12.

Building upon momentum generated by last year's marathon, the event was moved to accommodate the larger anticipated audience. The program has grown artistically as well, with notable composers D.J. Sparr and Marc Mellits appearing as composers-in-residence. Sparr is known for his ability to combine American vernacular music with current trends in art-music composition that appeals to a broad range of listeners. Mellits takes on minimalism and offers a new perspective on the works of the minimalist masters.

Joining the marathon this year is a host of classical and jazz musicians from around the country. Frank Pahl, the Motor City Jazz Orchestra, and Robert Tye with Mark Kieme and David Taylor are among the performers scheduled to perform works by composers John Luther Adams, Luciano Berio, John Zorn, Georges Aperghis, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and many others.

Another feature of "Strange Beautiful Music II" is the inclusion of Detroit noise bands, Graveyards and Slither.
(Performance by New Music Detroit. September, 2008)

Time Union Review, Albany NY:
D. J. Sparr’s “Ahi Va!” and (___) combine elements of Spanish and West African music, respectively. At least on first hearing, both works showed skilled composers at work but provided less substance than in any of the compositions.
(Performance by Albany Symphony's Dogs of Desire. May, 2008)

THE WASHINGTON POST:
“D.J. Sparr's Woodlawn Drive is a full-of-tricks sextet that begins with engulfing, clustered yet delicate nature sounds. To oversimplify: Yesteryear – Sparr's grandmother's house in Woodlawn, Md. – materializes; there are fiddling and other rusticities that gradually fade, displaced by a racket of suburban disturbance (traffic, etc.). Joel Lazar conducted this little charmer, which for all the uproar was immediately accessible to anyone who doesn't mind amicable dissonance.”
(Performance by the Contemporary Music Forum of Washington, D.C. November 2000)

THE WASHINGTON POST:
“[Sparr’s Lunacy Tunas] showed evidence of a vibrant and nimble musical imagination. Beginning with a serenely ascending modal figure in his resetting of Gertrude Stein's ‘Pigeons on the Grass, Alas,’ Sparr explores a range of manias that elicit a corresponding variety of musical atmospherics in which an overall attention to formal shaping is apparent.”
(Performance by the Contemporary Music Forum of Washington, D.C. October 1996)

THE WASHINGTON POST:
"The underground scene is squeaky clean at the Capital Fringe Festival. Certainly, the concert "Carnal Node," by the Great Noise Ensemble, was held underground. But the basement in question was the spanking-new Forum at the Harman Center for the Arts, and all the folding chairs in the world were not enough to confer a patina of smoke and rebellion on this fresh-painted white room.

Similarly, the title "Carnal Node" seemed to breathe deviance, but the piece in question, by D. J. Sparr, proved to be an attractive but rather slight cantata about looking for love on the Internet, told in the narrative voice of someone who is anxious to affirm, "I am not a nerd."

The gentleman doth protest too much. Still, the program as a whole represented an appealing college try at delivering contemporary classical funk. Surrounding Sparr's wisps of music, fleeting as text messages, was a work called "Thick Skin," a brassy, bopping piece of not-jazz by Ryan Brown, and Marc Mellits's "Five Machines," a sequence of intense rhythmic miniatures originally written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, a performing sextet that includes cello, clarinet, percussion and electric guitar."
-Anne Midgette
(Performance by the Great Noise Ensemble, July 2008)

WILLIAMS COLLEGE RECORD:
“This work [Wrought Hocket] was the highlight of the Berkshire New Music Festival. One had to admire the startling contrasts between the textures Sparr created.”
(Performance by the Berkshire Symphony. October 1997)

NATIONAL YOUNG COMPOSERS COMPETITION PRESS RELEASE:
“Yehudi Wyner, one of the judges who reviewed Wrought Hocket, described it as ‘intelligently organized, full of interesting opposites and exotic couplings and groupings . . . strong in its tenacious development of the material’.”