Composer • Cellist

Flaherty's music possesses an irresistible kinetic energy coupled with a tremendous expressivity; the result is music that grips the listener from beginning to end. Of particular note is the title piece, Looking for Answers, for piano trio and electronics, which is a truly blockbuster piece, and one of the best works I've ever heard that combines electronics with a traditional chamber music scoring and language.

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—Carson Cooman,
Fanfare Magazine

This release collects several compositions written over the last 20 years, combining electronics with acoustic instruments, mainly strings and a toy piano. This instrument crops up several times in his list of works. He seems fascinated with not the basic sound itself but the behaviour of the harmonics of this instrument which are, in fact, a bit weird. I believe all recordings on this release are 'firsts', though probably performed several times already. Something I have come across with many of the SEAMUS composers, too, for instance, sporting long lists of compositions but very few, if any, recordings. Lots of work ahead. The first track, 'Shepard's Pi' (a pun on the good old English pie, something you can actually eat in this country), is written for toy piano and consists of a long string of rising and receding scales, playing with the 'overtones' and mirroring the acoustic piano sounds in two different electronic processings. Not my favourite, though. 'Threnody', the second track, starts off the coming display of string music on this CD. The solo cello is no longer solo as the electronic processor plays back the sound, echoing, filtering, layering, and picking harmonics. I must say, this piece works better than the first, with the cello offering a better source for layering sound on sound and creating a space within which the music can develop and flow. 'Under the Weather' combines an organ with the cello (there is a distinct tendency towards the lower string scales here, but Flaherty is a cello player himself ...) into a very effective piece of music - electronic treatment (if any) is very sublime here. The three parts of 'Recess' have the Eclipse string quartet perform musical patterns that walk around the space, sparsely supported by live electronic processing (which eventually offers a continuous background) in a more expressionist than contemporary style. 'Violelation' does not address violence but violins ... in analogy to Bach's famous piece using the letters of his name, Flaherty uses here violinist Cindy Fogg's name to arrange and re-arrange notes of the solo viola. This might sound strenuous but actually works well, with a background growling drone made by processing the sounds (and yes, no i, n, y, or o). Again, the electronics allow the performer to play on several levels simultaneously, giving the music more breadth and the viola sound a variety of different characters, even breaking out into a Bartok-esque second half after pointillistic beginnings. 'Mixed Messages' is a duo of violin and piano, supported by a low growl of processed violin and a 'prepared piano' (?) sound reminding of Hania Rani. The final piece, 'Release', is a duo of strings with the electronics mostly limited to an echo track. All in all, I had expected to find a more 'electronic' sounding approach - judging from the title. What we see, though, is strings-dominated music that is more related to Debussy, Bartok, and Janacek than contemporary electroacoustic music (which this does not pretend to be). Maybe I should have paid more attention to Flaherty's flippant remark that he 'loves humans more', though he teaches electronic music. An enjoyable release that reminds us that electronic processing can be a support for musicians in broadening the spectrum of a performance and not only a means in itself.

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—— Robert Steinberger,
6.14.2022

sober . . . irreverent . . .sensual . . . wonky

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—Ron Schepper,
textura.com

A set where new age meets contemporary classical meets outer space, this electro acoustic mover even brings toys into the mix as he follows Allen Toussaint’s view that there’s music everywhere. The kind of stuff you can hear playing at an installation and buy impulsively on the way out, you can bet that at the very least, your kids will be fascinated by a grown up playing toy piano. Wild in its own way.

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—— Chris Spector,
6.01.2022

The title of composer Tom Flaherty’s monograph recording Mixed Messages can be read as referring not only to the title track for violin, piano, and electronics, but more generally to the work of electroacoustic composition, which mixes the messaging of two different ways of creating sound. As it happens Flaherty, who directs the Pomona College Electronic Studio, mixes the messaging of acoustic instruments and electronics with a well-honed sense of complementarity. The works presented on this album represent a style of composition in which the electronics are an often subtle, and always natural, presence within the overall sound, serving to augment or emphasize harmonies and textures. This comes out clearly on the album’s centerpiece, the three-movement Recess (2017) for string quartet, performed here with the optional electronics part included. The piece is grounded in the accumulation and repetition of brief motifs, which in the first movement form the foundation over which intertwined single lines drift downward, and in the third movement provide a pulsing, compressed rhythmic energy. The second movement features thick harmonies set out in long tones moving in and out of greater and lesser dissonances. On this movement in particular the electronics play a role in regulating the density and resonance of the sound’s overall texture, while maintaining the movement’s harmonic transformations as its center of musical gravity. The mixed messages of the title track, from 2014, arise from its harmonic undecidability. At its center is a four-note chord that, depending on how it’s presented, could be major or minor, or consonant or dissonant. Acoustic piano and violin are accompanied by samples of violin and piano, which fruitfully complicate an already complicated harmonic knot. Other highlights include 2020’s Release for violin, cello, and electronics, which integrates electronics-enhanced rhythms with timbral contrasts based on different string techniques, and Threnody (2003) for cello and electronics, which sets up a real-time, stimulus-and-response duet between live processing and a semi-improvised cello part.

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—— Daniel Barbiero,
7.27.2022

The cellist and composer Tom Flaherty brings us an electro-acoustic listen that welcomes an all-star cast on strings and keys, as Flaherty handles electronics with a versatile vision that draws inspiration from extra musical events and phenomenon. Shepard’s Pi starts the listen with Genevieve Feiwan’s playful toy piano alongside Flaherty’s mysterious electronics in the very creative octave manipulation and atypical rhythmic gestures, and Threnody follows with Maggie Parkins on cello as Flaherty weaves his craft into a meditative and chilling display. Packed in the middle is the 3 segments of Recess, where violins, viola and cello from the Eclipse Quartet brings orchestral ideas into electronic moments that recruits a rare energy and strategic repetition, while Violelation makes great use of Cynthia Fogg’s plucked violin that pairs with live electronics and tips its hat to Balkan music. Release exits the listen, and in 11+ minutes it blends Jeff Gauthier’s violin and Parkins’ cello in tense, cathartic moments that can be bare and then later dense with harmonic and timbral appeal. Flaherty has enjoyed a lengthy and successful career that includes a Grammy nomination, and along with the exceptional help he births a highly unique electro-acoustic experience that few, if anyone, could replicate.

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—— Tom Haugen,
10.21.2022

Flaherty's music is hauntingly beautiful in its simplicity and understatement and van Zyl plays it to affecting perfection - a perfect fit for the wide and varied characters from Illinois' past that parade before us.

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—Don Maslowski,
Long Beach Press-Telegram

The concert's emotional high point was Flaherty's "A Timbered Choir," with words by Wendell Berry. Four excerpts took us from harmonious minimalism, through an intense vision of our destruction of the landscape, to a feeling of anguished triumph. [Colorado Vocal Arts Ensemble; Deborah Jenkins Teske, cond.]

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—Mark Arnest,
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, CO)

“Tom Flaherty's Barstow Etude is the longest and one of the most diverse and substantial works on the program, covering a great range of expressive states and using a subset of Partch's 43-tone scale. [performed by Aron Kallay, "Beyond 12" on Microfest Records]

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—– Robert Carl,
Fanfare Magazine

“The program drew a large if not full house; the sounds were handsome. (I would extend that accolade even to Tom Flaherty's antic Bowling Bells, which used a surrogate "gamelan" of kitchen bowls of various sizes and states of emptiness, played with a variety of implements including combs, toothbrushes and you-name-it.)”

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—Alan Rich,
L. A. Weekly

Opening on a mellow, sustained beat that grows ever more urgent, there is a simple beauty to the tango-like pulse of Cellopianian Flights. Originally scored for cello and marimba, Flaherty's specially prepared piano creates cimbalom-like sounds for the long arching cello lines to work with. Ever more urgently, it creates a Newton's cradle-like effect of sustained momentum and energy.

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—Barnaby Rayfield,
Fanfare Magazine

Easygoing was the premiere of Tom Flaherty's "Cellorimbian Flights," for cello (Roger Lebow) and marimba (David Johnson). Cello and marimba are not easily matched, and instead of joining in friendly interplay, they joined in friendly spotlight-sharing. When the cello sang, the marimba faded into the background. When the marimba clattered, the cello became faint. But the score—with its pleasant melodies, hints of tango and mariachi, and rhythmic liveliness—did much to please.“ [Xtet]

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—Mark Swed,
Los Angeles Times

Tom Flaherty’s Conversation, a first performance, made a brief but sweet interlude, inertwining and juxtaposingthe instruments to plaintive effect. [Mark Hill, oboe; Robin Peller, flute]

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—–Donal Henahan,
The New York Times

The work's three movements . . . impress this listener in toto as beautifully crafted elusiveness, in that one attempts to fix his attention on aural pools of mercury.

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—– Mike Silverton,
Fanfare Magazine

“Mr. Flaherty's ''Diversion'' for clarinet and piano is imaginatively derived from a succinct motif.” [performed by Tim Smith, clarinet, Elizabeth Rodgers, piano]

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—– Tim Page,
The New York Times

“To preface the events, there was a "Musical Birthday Card" by composer Tom Flaherty for Pro Arte's 20th anniversary. Fanfarelike in duration, the piece for strings had a kind of spinning, fluttering surface, a counterpoint of melodies between upper and lower instrument groups, and a certain amount of minimalist additive and diminutive treatment of repeated motifs.” [Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston]

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—– Ellen Pfeifer,
The Boston Herald

“Suellen Hershman was the soloist in the premiere of the Flute Concerto of Thomas Flaherty, an intimate, logically crafted piece that also moves through some fetching night music, through a a gangling insect dance, to a convincingly splashy conclusion. The honesty and self-possession, in both the work and its performance, were highly attractive.” [Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston]

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—– Richard Buell,
The Boston Globe

"The recent Capstone release, Black Sea Idyll, is anything but idle, getting right down to business in the opening Intrada by Tom Flaherty, a brilliant three-part curtain-raiser featuring frenetic brass.” [Black Sea Philharmonic]

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—– Mark Alburger,
20th Century Music

". . . a truly blockbuster piece, and one of the best works I've ever heard that combines electronics with a traditional chamber music scoring and language."

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—– Carson Cooman,
Fanfare Magazine

“Through much of Tom Flaherty's Moments of Inertia (2003) one felt a sort of love/hate relationship with the blandishments of minimalism. "With Quiet Turbulence," its first part, could have gone on for eons with its doo-dah oscillations but weaved a beautiful lyric line instead. The metrical shifts of "Uneasy Lullaby" would have kept any normal child up past midnight, but he wouldn't have been bored. "With Headlong Agitation," as it turned out, was an excellent title for the self-possessed, purposeful finale. As serious-minded divertimentos go (not a bursting genre), this was a winner, and satisfying to hear.” [Dinosaur Annex]

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—– Richard Buell,
The Boston Globe

“Digital processing turns a viola and a cello into a quartet in Tom Flaherty's Quartet for Viola, Cello and Digital Processor. Through time delay and pitch transposition the viola is fractured into a trio with itself. The viola is the star, preening in front of a three-way mirror, while the cello lays down the velveteen cushion. The piece is both pretty and fun.” [Dinosaur Annex]

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—– Richard Dyer,
The Boston Globe

“The most ambitious undertaking was by the ensemble’s cellist, Tom Flaherty, His Quintet “Good Times” makes use of neo-classic devices, but also elements of Gershwin-style jazz and Ives-style dissonance.” [Almont Ensemble]

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—–Gregg Wager,
Los Angeles Times

"Urgent, rough-edged, but lightened by quirky little motifs throughout, it has an engaging, restless quality."

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—-Barnaby Rayfield,
Fanfare Magazine

“Flaherty's Semi-Suite let the cello be its haunting self; the composer-cellist played it splendidly, first the touching movement called “Lament”, then the technically challenging “Trilling.”

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—– Peter Jacobi,
Herald-Times Reviewer (Bloomington, IN)

“Thomas Flaherty's three-movement Serenade for String Orchestra (Contention; Lament; Dances) wore its considerable ingenuity both lightly and engagingly. The composer's strategy -- to give "the impression of two or more simultaneous tempos, either through syncopation or polyrhythm" -- results (1) in a kind of busy textural brightness reminiscent of the post-war American Stravinsky School and (2) in something like the hypnotic but "up" quality you can hear in the best of the Minimalists. Flaherty gives you a lot of teasing ambiguities to listen to, if you're so inclined, along with plenty of evidence that he knows what makes string ensembles tick -- his experience as a free-lance cellist in Los Angeles manifestly pays off here. In other words, altogether delightful, and a cinch to go onto the list of 1994's best new pieces. And may its circulation be wide.” [Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston]

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—– Richard Buell,
The Boston Globe

“Tom Flaherty’s Three Pieces for Clarinet was as much fun to listen to as Rice appeared to have playing it. Using multiphonics to splendid effect, Rice skillfully accompanied himself in the chorale of the first piece.” [Albert Rice, clarinet]

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—– James Manishen,
Winnipeg Free Press

“Bridge's new CD of music by Tom Flaherty was my introduction to this L.A.-based cellist/composer. While the disc offers a variety of chamber music combinations including two duets for two pianos, the piece I find myself coming back to most is his 1991 Trio for Cello and Digital Processor (which should be a duet right?). The Trio, according to the booklet notes, makes references to repertoire as disparate as J.S. Bach's Es ist Genug and Edgard Varèse's Poème electronique, but (in a rare non-analytical moment) I was too busy being saturated by the textures to notice or care.”

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—– FJO,
NewMusicBox

"Animated by stabbing cello patterns (reminiscent, in fact, of those powering Bernard Herrmann's Psycho soundtrack), Triphoria alternates fluidly between aggressively uptempo and serene nachtmusik passages."

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—– Ron Schepper,
textura.com

The first piece on the concert program was Wagon Wheeling (2012) by Tom Flaherty and written for Aron Kallay. This piece was inspired by those old western movies where the camera frame rates gave the illusion of wagon wheels running backwards. This was scored for piano and percussion and opened with a steady rhythm in the vibraphone reminiscent of a trotting horse. This increased in volume just before a sharp cymbal crash signaled the entrance of a independent piano line that add a fresh sense of movement. This developed into a nice groove that occasioned a relaxed, mellow feeling. As the piece proceeded, a strong beat in the piano engendered a more purposeful feeling. The precise playing of Aron Kallay on piano combined with Nick Terry’s animated percussion, produced an interesting texture. Differences in the rhythms between the two players evoked the perception of a new tempo, much as the variation in velocity of the wagon wheels in those old films.A forceful series of solo passages on the tom-tom and cymbals added some power before falling back to a softer, mysterious feel from the piano and marimba. Wagon Wheeling is more about rhythm and pulse than harmony or melody, and there was an engaging variety to the many sounds produced by just the two players. With Wagon Wheeling Flaherty effectively deploys what is available from the sonic palette of piano and percussion.

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—Paul Muller,
Sequenza 21

“Of the tape pieces, Upon the Cello stood out for an inventive, poetic use of the Synclavier and extended cello effects.”
–Gregg Wager, Los Angeles Times

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—–Gregg Wager,
Los Angeles Times

An additional, unannounced treat was the premiere, by Shelton and Cigan, of a piece titled "When Time Was Young," with music by Thomas Flaherty and words by longtime 20th Century Consort supporter Edward Weismiller -- a limpid, lyrical and effortlessly touching duet for soprano and clarinet. [performed by Lucy Shelton, 20th Century Consort]

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—– Tim Page,
Washington Post

—an exceptionally appealing duo for cello and marimba/ [Xtet]

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—Alan Rich,
L. A. Weekly

This piece, sensitively played by Madeline Berkely (flute) and Helmut Seeber (oboe) is, as the title suggests, a dialogue between the two instruments in a lyrical, atonal style. And thanks for repeating this item. [Concorde]

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—Barra Boydell,
The Irish Times

". . .crystalline in certain moments and speckled with percussive detail at others."

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—– Ron Schepper,
textura.com

“Moments of Inertia (2003) by Tom Flaherty contains three movement’s worth of neo-process patterned accompaniments out of which various fetching melodies emerge. As in Steve Reich’s best music, these planes of textured backing interact well with each other, deftly delineating larger structural units. And the sound world is irresistible, making scintillating use of its flute-viola-cello trio. In brief, it’s an absolute must-hear.” [Dinosaur Annex]

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—– David Cleary,
New Music Connoisseur

“Tom Flaherty's Semi-Suite for solo cello, a piece as amusing as its title and even more arresting, got a fervent, terrifically deep-toned performance by Robin Bonnell.”

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—– Joshua Kosman,
The San Francisco Chronicle

“Flaherty's Trio for Cello and Digital Processor had his instrument communicating with itself. The effect actually suggested the presence of three players rather than just the one who appeared on stage. An impressive tour de force.”
– Peter Jacobi, Herald-Times (Bloomington, IN)
“In the Trio for Cello and Digital Processor the rhythmic layers of his solo suite are electronically magnified beyond a single performer's conception.”

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—– Ken Smith,
The Gramphone

California composer Flaherty wrote When Time Was Young for Shelton when she received an honorary degree from Pomona College. He cast the six poems by Edward Weismiller for her flexible, compelling voice as it resounds with violin (Hirono Oka), cello (Ohad Bar-David), clarinet (Arne Running), and flute (Edward Schulz). The title song, with clarinet alone, explored dissonances, let the clarinet seem to finish the soprano's sentences, sometimes, in poetry that exulted: "Let us sing our lives away." [performed by Lucy Shelton, Network for New Music]

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—– Ken Smith,
The Gramphone