"... a 21st-Century secular oratorio, a work that deftly fuses recorded and live media,
alternates chorus and the spoken word, and juxtaposes live drama with instrumentalists
in order to pose probing questions about the nature and range of human knowledge.
... a music review ... could not hope to do justice to the depth and complexity of the work’s
extensive catalogue of philosophical theses, but suffice it to say that Reynolds has concisely
distilled them and deftly articulated them without indulging in pat conclusions. His title
clearly shows he can live with ambiguity."
... While Xenakis’ approaches to music, architecture and the design of the
Reynolds Desert House provide an overarching structure, the [book’s] content is fascinatingly discursive … personal reflections, anecdotes and expressions of feeling serve to underline the touching honesty, even idealism, at the heart of this project. [The] supplementary material suggests that the Reynolds Desert House was not just a plan for a building, but an idea that grew with and from human connections and the
exchange of ideas.… the analysis provided is thorough and informative.…
the authors invite us to view decades of artistic endeavor and friendship. This book is an affirmative testament to the abundant creativity of lives lived to the full.
Edmund Hunt TEMPO, Volume 77, Issue 302, July 2023
PASSAGE ... THE BOOK is a collaborative project realized by composer-author Reynolds with artist Stacie Birky Greene and editors Robert Kirzinger and Karen Reynolds. Through graphic manipulations, it melds texts written by Reynolds with images he selected such that a metaphoric “viscosity” arises, and the reader/apprehender’s experience is constantly modulated. Reynolds has performed intermedia PASSAGE events in La Jolla, at Darmstadt, in New York, Cambridge, and Ann Arbor.
Extended review of passage by Harvey Sollberger: "To enter this book is to enter a world in which its author, the composer Roger Reynolds, weaves together the strands of a life lived in music into a unique and personal mandala of memories, thoughts, dreams, images, and stories...."Read more
