“Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra by California-based composer Ann Callaway enriched the repertoire for an instrument that seldom gets a solo role. Bass clarinetist Robert Hill.…gave the appealing work a performance of exceptional artistry. Callaway’s concerto, an evocative tone poem in three movements, beautifully explored the tone color and pitch range of the bass clarinet. “Moonrise Soliloquy” created a mysterious atmosphere of lyrical lines and expressive timbres. “Meteor Showers” revealed the composer’s indebtedness to the “night music” of Bartok and George Crumb. “Journey through a Summer Night” gave the soloist a big cadenza and the orchestra a brilliant ending.”
— Wilma Salisbury, THE PLAIN DEALER, Cleveland
“Tops for me was…Ann Callaway’s The Memory Palace for clarinet, cello, and piano….[Callaway writes that it] started off as “a musical artifact…a very long chorale tune, or perhaps a pavane, more suited to something I might have written in the 1600’s.” Her 13-minute trio does indeed have antique qualities—-among which is a sturdy tune with satisfying cadences—-but more than that, it is suffused with 21st-century sensibilities. Bells sounds are mimicked by the pianist reaching over and stubbing strings inside while striking the keys; the cello soars from time to time in high registers; and both the piano, with Messiaen-like triads, and the clarinet, with interesting contrapuntal melodies, have much to contribute….The Memory Palace is a great piece that deserves more hearings….”
— Jeff Dunn---SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE online
“Further downtown, at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church [New York], Thomas Murray had a very different organ to work with—-the massive 1970-71 Aeolian-Skinner with its 12,422 pipes. Ann Callaway’s commissioned world premiere, Altarpiece, might have been designed just to show off the range of this organ, and it did so…elegantly…..Pulling in St. Bartholomew’s chancel, gallery, and celestial organs, it created far-away, repeated figures that evolved subtly into delicate, Philip Glass-like harmonica sonorities, and moved around the organs for a surround-sound impact. Ms. Callaway’s piece, and the skill and virtuosity of Mr. Murray, showed the flexibility and sensitivity of this giant instrument.”
— Heidi Waleson, opera critic for The Wall Street Journal and contributing classical editor for Billboard, writing in THE AMERICAN ORGANIST magazine
“Callaway’s Alleluia, vidimus stellam used a reduced choir to pile up lines of quasi-organum on one another, a bit suggestive of the Ligeti technique. Only Callaway avoided the thick clusters common to Ligeti’s early works and kept a firm hand on the tonal basis. It’s a good, strong piece of work that I look forward to hearing again. Pacific Mozart Ensemble, April 13, 2004, San Francisco”
— Heuwell Tircuit---SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE online
“The Walden Trio yesterday, at Ramapo College, introduced a suite it had commissioned, Ann Callaway’s Seven Dramatic Episodes: Tone Poems on Excerpts from the Works of Edgar Allan Poe.” The episodes are diverse in pace and tonal premonitions, but all seven are a unified product of introspection. And each is as brief and disturbing as the brush of a night wing. Ms. Callaway has imagined isolated sounds that sometimes support and at other times are supported by lyrical lines. Dissonance, when it occurs, is softened in the pulse of rhythm; often when rhythm breaks, it does so against assonant comments. The thunder is from a distance, the lightning refracts on the surface of a pool. The tone poems are extensions of imagery from Poe’s “Al Aaraaf,” “Eldorado,” “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” and Israfel.”….Its real homage to Poe…lies in Ms. Callaway’s precise discernment of an effort Poe made—-to apply the best of poetry’s tradition to his own exploration of its future. Ms. Callaway…has imagined the musical equivalent.”