Reviews

• The howling of desperate wolves opens Leonardo Balada’s “No-res,” or “Nothing,” a bleak cantata about death…Using text (by French writer Jean Paris) from several languages, tapes of animals, smashing glass and uprooted trees, the work’s harrowing look at death would make a worthy Halloween counterpart to Handel’s Messiah. Its impetus and immediacy stem from the death of the composer’s mother. First lamenting it, then protesting it, the chorus jabs and punches as much as sings, the narrator speaks with awful hardness, and the orchestra thrashes about—all harrowing and even touching.
  Andrew Druckenbrod, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette