Press
“Brilliant, haunting and beautiful… her music will continue to connect us with our space and time.”
- Oregon ArtsWatch
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Oregon Arts Watch
Composing is a kind of listening:
Grossman’s music is music that should be recorded, and listened to as recorded music, because it has that perfect combination of ephemerality and permanence – of specificity and transcendence, of contingency and necessity, of the local and the universal – that defines all good recorded music.
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Oregon ArtsWatch
“It is astounding what Grossman and the sextet are able to do with a mere six notes. From the first to the last track, the music grows and expands from the barest long tones to a vast melange of mock-bird calls, pentatonic motives, trills and extended techniques.”
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Oregon ArtsWatch
“Grossman’s music lacks none of these qualities – her compositional voice is rich and assured, direct and deep and meaningful as music. It’s as if she understands that music, if it is to support extramusical causes like environmentalism and social justice and religious awakening and personal expression, must first be solidly good music.”
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Oregon ArtsWatch
“The music was brilliant, haunting and beautiful. The ensemble’s collective vibrato was stunning as if they were all breathing as one. In some ways this feels like a return to a time when music served a different role in society… Concerts like Flutes in the Garden remind me of a time when music was composed for a specific place and time. It felt purposeful.”
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East Portland News
"A concert like no other: With the unique seating arrangement, in which about half of the audience was seated along the circular Aerial Tree Walk, this exceptional concert transported attendees musically to even more lofty planes than under the forest canopy where they were sitting... The effect of the musically-immersive experience was mesmerizing; all present were clearly enraptured by the sounds of wind instruments mingled with the resonance of the natural surroundings."
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Oregon ArtsWatch
“Fluid music evokes nature in a new recording… The imagery of fire and water takes center stage in Wildfires and Waterways… Her music melds a passion for the environment with knowledge of the folk traditions of America, Bali, and Japan to form a unique voice from the Pacific Northwest.”
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Northwest Reverb
“a joyful march that gradually transitioned to sounds of flowing water…wonderfully deep phrases from the cellos and a rich tapestry of melodic lines…beguiling lighter passages that evoked the image of birds enjoying the river, and it brought the piece to a satisfying close.”
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East Portland News
“The evening was delightful, filled with fascinating music well played, in an elegant setting, just as the composer had envisioned.”
“her compositional voice is rich and assured, direct and deep and meaningful as music.”
- Oregon ArtsWatch
"Portland composer Deena T. Grossman often writes music that sounds like rivers or forests, or mountains or the wind. A lot of her work reflects her deep experience in nature."
- All Classical Portland
“Fluttering, buzzing, and glissandos conjured the wildlife, landscape, and rhythm of the river. The 'Sea Shanty' movement was flavored with a folk-dance-like jig, and the final movement, 'Into the Pacific,' elicited the merging of fresh water into the vast expanse of the ocean.”
- Newsbreak
“Portland-based composer Deena Grossman lived for a couple of months in Turin, Italy before the pandemic hit. During that time, she enjoyed listening and absorbing the sounds and scenes along the Po River, which flows through the city. Inspired by her experience there, she wrote “Songs of the River Po,” which she divided into three movements. The first opened with a joyful march that gradually transitioned to sounds of flowing water with the upper strings soaring above the sensation of waves from the lower strings. The second movement featured wonderfully deep phrases from the cellos and a rich tapestry of melodic lines that were exchanged by the sections of the orchestra. The third movement offered beguiling lighter passages that evoked the image of birds enjoying the river, and it brought the piece to a satisfying close.”
- Northwest Reverb
“Ambient and evocative, I could almost see the ghost-white egrets dancing in the rain, bright yellow socks at the end of coal black legs whirling amongst the greenery.”
- Oregon ArtsWatch
This concert offers “a sacred sense of place, and the ways music–and musicians–can find and support the meanings inherent in that sacred sense of place. It is through the act of naming, honoring, and protecting these sacred places that they remain sacred. To take music out of its more customary settings–concert halls, bars, churches–into outdoor spaces is to transfer its power to those spaces” (On Deena’s 2023 concert “Flutes in the Garden” at the Leach Botanical Garden).
- Oregon ArtsWatch
“Grossman’s environmental music poignantly expresses the mission and values of Columbia Riverkeeper, where she is composer-in-residence.”
- Oregon ArtsWatch
