Reviews
| Review of BARRY MILLS: Winter Images by John Alexander in Musical Opinion Autumn 2023 Issue number 1 Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of BARRY MILLS: Winter Images Vol 9 by Alan Cooper, CD Reviews Sept 2023 Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of BARRY MILLS:Elan Valley MusicWeb International July 2023 Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of BARRY MILLS: Portraits – Volume 7 MusicWeb International June 2023 Click here to display the review … | |
| Review of BARRY MILLS: Caledonia – Volume 8 MusicWeb International June 2023 Click here to display the review … | |
| Review of BARRY MILLS: Portraits / Caledonia Musical Opinion Quarterly January – March 2023 Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of BARRY MILLS: Portraits / Caledonia November 2022 BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of “Interbeing [Vol 6]” JANUARY – MARCH 2020 MUSICAL OPINION QUARTERLY Click here to display the review … | |
| Review of “Interbeing [Vol 6]” DECEMBER 2019 BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of “Interbeing [Vol 6]” MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL 2020 Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of “Elan Valley” APRIL ‐ JUNE 2018 MUSICAL OPINION QUARTERLY Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of “Elan Valley” CLASSICAL GUITAR MAGAZINE SUMMER 2018 Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of “Elan Valley” MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL Click here to display the review … | |
| Review of “Elan Valley” THE ART MUSIC LOUNGEAn Online Journal of Jazz and Classical Music Click here to display the review … | |
| Review of “Elan Valley”NICK BOSTON, GSCENE Click here to display the review … | |
| Review of “Summer Waves” THE ART MUSIC LOUNGE An Online Journal of Jazz and Classical Music Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of “Under the Stars” MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL AUGUST 2019 Click here to display the review … | |
| Review of “Mosaics” NOVEMBER 7, 2019 THE ART MUSIC LOUNGE Click here to display the review … |  |
| Review of “Under the Stars”, “Mosaics”, “Summer Waves”, “Morning Sea” and “Tartano” MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL, November 2005 Click here to display the review … |    |
| Review of “Under the Stars”, “Summer Waves” and “Mosaics” CLASSICAL GUITAR MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2003 Click here to display the review … |  |
| Bloody Amateurs (Unknown Public UP14CD) “Brighton-based composer Barry Mills earns his living as a postman, and the first movement of his guitar quartet ‘The Play of Light on the Sea’ is a quite beautiful piece, with an unexpectedly complex surface derived from the most economic of means. Philip Clark, The Wire, December 2002 |
Reviews of ‘Summer Waves’ CD
“His imaginative nature-inspired music on this disc finds its medium in diverse settings, ranging from solo instruments (saxophone, harp) to quartets for guitars and saxophones.
Pictorialism in the Saxophone Sketches deftly delineates the autumnal fall of a leaf and some chilly overblowing presages winter. In the Saxophone Quartet we can hear the restrained, colouristic, essentially tonal but angular writing of the first movement, Morning Song and in the following movement the soprano saxophone lends a ghostly patina to the evocative Night Winds. Mills exploits the b flat clarinet by pitch-bending and flutter-tonguing in The Wind and the Trees, a solo for Philip Edwards, whereas in the succeeding Duo for Flute and Clarinet elliptical tonal contrasts and blends are fully explored.
The impress of the excellent Guitar Quartet is consonant with Mills’ avowedly poignant appreciation of nature in its widest sense – it is impressionistic, reflective, refractive and subtle. Moving with the Wind, the middle movement, with its plucked strings is especially attractive as are the thrummed sonorities of In Deep Night, the last movement. The cogent and well-argued trios are concrete examples of Mills’ narrative gifts – with their moments of occasional heightened expressivity – and he is notably successful in his viola writing, where he pursues extremes of register for valid musical reasons, never resorting to comfortable and generic gestures.
The performances are more than merely dedicated and the sound is perfectly adequate. A welcome disc.”
John Woolf, Classical Music Web
“This is not the first recording of the expressively refined music of Barry Mills, but it is an important one, containing eight works, mainly of short duration, and sufficient to acquaint the listener with the work of a genuine artist who possesses a very solid compositional technique. There is fine music here, with a surprisingly wide range of articulation and texture. My favourites are the two Trios and the extended Guitar Quartet, but each piece is worth close attention from the serious music lover.
Much of Mills’ work is suggested by natural phenomena. The title track, the first movement of ‘Saxophone Sketches’, so beautifully played by the late Tony Sions, largely sets the tone of the album. The performances and recordings are admirable. The composer’s booklet notes could have included composition dates, but this is a fascinating and rewarding album to which I have returned with increasing pleasure.
Robert Matthew-Walker, Musical Opinion, March 2002
“…as the title suggests, nature has a profound influence on Barry’s music. While listening you find yourself transported into the natural setting of the music, such as the falliing of a leaf in the second of the ‘Saxophone Sketches’, entitled ‘Autumn’. Summer Waves is an extraordinary CD brimming with emotion and only serves to illustrate Barry’s considerable talent as a classical composer.”
Paul McCarthy, “In Touch”, published by the University of Sussex
Review of ‘Morning Sea’ CD
“His music has a similar candour – bountifully expressive yet unassuming … Expressive eloquence and a certain unaffected quality make this a fine set of pieces.”
Catherine Nelson, The Strad
Other reviews:
“The most inventive piece was the ‘Trio for Flute, Viola and Guitar’ by Barry Mills aiming to convey the ebb and flow of nature’s rugged power and doing so admirably, music stripped of superfluity and rendered in stark but striking colours.”
Tim Painting, Classical Guitar Magazine
” … and so this miniature planted itself firmly in the listeners’ imagination. In a different, gentler and conspicuously idiomatic way so did Barry Mills’s exquisite ‘Harp Sketches’ almost as brief and given eloquently by Hugh Webb.”
Stephen Pettitt, The Times
“The most memorable piece to my ears was Barry Mills’s ‘Saxophone Quartet’, comprised of two movements, Morning Song, a wistful rather grave aubade which is stopped dead by a granitic chord at its close – and Night Winds – a really superb piece of naturalistic tone painting ….premiered with elan by Saxploitation.”
Guy Rickards, Tempo
“Scarcely less impressive were Michael Finnissy’s French Piano (1991) perhaps the most polished item in the concert and the “Saxophone Sketches (1993) by Barry Mills. This latter work was rendered beautifully by Tony Sions on the alto instrument. Mills’s four sketches describe a seasonal course from the languid ‘Summer Waves’ through rather more active ‘Autumn’ and ‘Winter’ to the calm of ‘Spring Morning’.”
Guy Rickards, Tempo
“Of particular note The Aulous Ensemble premiered Barry Mills’s ‘Duo for Flute and Clarinet’. This experimental piece featured vivid evocations of landscapes and river scenes, brief solos, switching dominances and high tone flute production.”
Sancia Scott-Portier, The Richmond and Twickenham Times
“Mills’s ‘Saxophone Quartet’ has two movements, ‘Morning Song’ and ‘Night Winds’, and these neatly complement each other in their gentleness of voice, mood, pattern and colour. Indeed, the closing chord of ‘night’ echoes and reminds us of ‘morning’, instilling in us positive affirmations of the certainty of life’s cycle rather than doubts brought on by weariness and loss. This is a telling piece of music, portraying stillness and calm.”
John Alexander, The Clarinet and Saxophone Magazine
“Christopher Hyde-Smith’s ability to change tone colour was beautifully displayed in the ‘Flute Sketches’ by Barry Mills. This is a pastoral journey for unaccompanied flute with subtle use of harmonics,fluttertongueing and bent notes evoking bird song and a fading sunset.”
Helen Lee, Pan – The National Flute Magazine
Atmosphere is Mills’ forte, 20 Jun 2002, on Amazon website
Reviewer:Simon Barrow (Exeter, United Kingdom)
“I discovered Barry Mills’ refreshing collection of miniatures, ‘Morning Sea’, quite by chance – at an art open house associated with the Brighton Festival a couple of years ago. Intrigued by what I heard, I bought a copy. This CD is part of a trilogy, the other chamber collections being ‘Mosaics’ and ‘Under the Stars’.
His work is impressionistic rather than formal in its concerns, however. On ‘Morning Sea’ the emphasis is very much on building a sense of atmosphere through tone, texture and contrast.
Mills’ music is tonal, but not unadventurous in its melodic patterns in the way that distinctly non-modernist moderns can be. After a while you begin to recognise one or two fairly evident techniques – insistent repeated riffs, doubling, call-and-response, moody key shifts, interesting block chords (sometimes vaguely reminiscent of Messiaen or Crumb), slow arpeggiated bursts. It can feel a little mannered, but it is thoughtful and often strikingly beautiful.
I enjoyed listening to the ‘Piano Sketches for Children’ alongside Chick Corea’s ‘Children’s Songs’ – very different, with their changing washes of sound held on sustain and una corda pedals (as the composer points out in his useful accompanying notes).
The Bekova Sisters and their accompanists obviously have a feel for Mills’ music and give tender performances. I found the rather plummy acoustic a little distracting – a small quarrel with the producer / engineer. And the one compositional area where Mills’ contrasts seem a bit too subtle for his own good (given what else is going on) is in the tempo department. It’s all so intense in its moodiness.
But these are quibbles. This is a fine, graceful collection of chamber pieces in a modern romantic (but not reactionary) vein. I thoroughly commend ‘Morning Sea’ and will make a note to check out the other two discs at some point.”
Review of Mandolin and Guitar Concerto, Basel, 22 September 2007
“… Barry Mills in his Concerto for Mandolin, Guitar and Symphony Orchestra seems to have used a type of Neo-impressionism. His wonderful, finely sculpted music often sounded like a contemporary reworking of the musical language of Claude Debussy.”
Rolf De Marchi, MZ Tuesday, 25 September 2007, Basel
“….scheint sich Barry Mills mit seinem Konzert fuer Mandoline, Gitarre und Sinfonieorchester einer Art Neo-Impressionismus verschrieben zu haben. Seine wunderbar fen ziselierte Musik kalng oft wie eine modernere Variante Claude Debussys. Das Duo Birgit Schwab (Gitarre) und Daniel Ahlert (Mandoline) spielte souveraen die Solo-Partien der beiden Konzerte, sensibel begleitet vom Akademischen Orchester.”
Review of Three Pieces for Piano, performed by Adam Swayne
“The occasional allusion to French Impressionism in Broughton’s Sonata were echoed in Barry Mills’ Three Pieces for Piano with their overt references to Ravel and Debussy reworked in Mills’ own individual manner. As in the Broughton, water was an image in “The River at Val di Mello”. Mills seduced the audience with exquisite harmonies hanging in the air with their evocaive resonances and the final trill of “The Moon and the Stars” seemed to resonate far into space.”
Phil Baker, Worthing Herald, Chichester Observer
Review of “Evening and Night”, performed by Imogen Hancock (classical trumpet) and Jennifer Hughes (piano)
Barry Mills Evening and Night was the three-part centrepiece. Mills’ works is often pictorial, evocative of natural imagery with a gentle modernism and expressive quietism. The first movement breathed a coast at night, very like Brighton’s with a glittering nightscape as the trumpet muted ranged rather like a quiet wind. the second slow movement evoked a contemplative pitch dark with hushed tones rippling out from an unseen centre. The finale though was spectacularly haunting It’s the ‘Last Post’ quoted, where Hancock turns away from the audience and pays straight into the piano strings on the raised piano lid (unusually open for accompaniment, because the trumpet’s so overwhelming and it’s a large acoustic too). The resonances from the piano strings are allowed an echo effect like a ghost answer. Each phrase is paused to allow it.
No wonder the soloists who commissioned it exactly a year ago instantly fell in love with it when it was delivered just too months later. Both artists possess the hush and stillness Mills works demand, and by this time you feel te trumpet’s soft snarl has come into force.
Simon Jenner, Fringe Review 2018 UK