Reviews

• Several solo pieces proved especially striking. Ivory and Ebony (2009), written for the San Antonio International Piano Competition, begins with a tolling effect so uneventful that you wondered how tough the contest could have been. The answer came quickly in Andrew Hsu’s incendiary account: before long, he was enmeshed in episodes of speedy, Bartokian complexity and fortissimo Lisztian dazzle. It is the kind of work that sounds as if it required more than 10 fingers, not to mention the agility to shift quickly between styles.
  Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, 09/05/2011
• ...commissioned for the San Antonio [International Piano Competition]... it’s an evocative work in which jazzy tone color and broad emotionalism are expressed through the idea of a rivalry between music made on the black keys and the white keys.
  
  Tower’s piece begins with a soft, quiet series of repeated chords that alter slightly harmonically, creating a sonic color wash very much in keeping with the Debussy that followed it. Tower makes use of the full keyboard, from deep rumblings in the bass to running passages in opposition directions that reach both ends of the instrument. Amid all this tonal bravura is a little motif, the first three notes of a minor-key scale, that help anchor the music in a narrative context.
  Greg Stepanich, Palm Beach ArtsPaper, 07/10/2009