Scenes from 'Unremembered' (2011)

…I came away with a newly discovered composer to get all enthusiastic about — Sarah Kirkland Snider, whose Scenes from Unremembered dominated the concert’s gorgeous second half […and] were the most musically compelling songs of the whole show. Angular melodies, chromatic mediant harmonies, overlapping ascending scales, rich rhythmic density arising from Monkishly interlocking ostinati, a whole lot of stomping and clapping and even a little tambourine and some antique cymbals. A Renaissancey minimalism, and quite honestly some of the coolest stuff I’ve heard in a long time.

Unremembered is all about exploding genres, bringing Van Dyke Parks into conversation with John Adams, My Brightest Diamond into collision with Edgard Varèse, and art song into contact with concept album. A recording is out now on New Amsterdam Records, and it’s great.

[Unremembered is] haunting, orchestral and poetic…cinematic and atmospheric…

[Unremembered is] music of thoughtful inquiry and humane emotion, willing to embrace a modicum (or more) of overt beauty but suspicious toward too-easy sentiment or the merely pretty and ornamental…a heady blend of thoughtful intricacy with forthright emotional appeal…the setting composed for each [song] is rhythmically and tonally distinct, a sequence of craftily detailed tableaux, rich with surprise and nuance.

…Unremembered is as enthralling in its musical flow as its lyrical narrative, and the way Snider guides, teases, and manipulates the listener is masterful. It’s a stunning, immensely rewarding experience…