“The work that left the deepest impression was ‘Many Stares through …’ for nine instruments by Sinan Savaskan (b.1954), …this minimalist, soft, dreamy and at times very beautiful music, which drew from Lontano a most lovable performance, consists of 180 sections. The four sections being performed are Numbers 60, 180, 210 and 340! Whatever the total number may be, I would gladly listen to some more sections, though not all of them at a time. The magic of this kind of music is cumulative and unless one can listen in a leisurely way, quietly and peacefully, one misses the best part of it.”
— Brigitte Schiffer, Today’s Music’ Contact New Music Journal
“Here all the movements were slow but very different from each other, even though the first two were studies in slow-moving tone colours and harmonies. The composer has discovered new sounds and textures in these instruments many of them fresh and beautiful. In fact the medium was divested of all its usual associations… I would like to hear it again.”
— Max Harrison, The Times
“…the premise here belonged to the Stockhausen connection: a popular song fused with a complex compositional ideal.”
— Nicholas Williams The Independent
“Sinan Savaskan’s Unique Strands, Circular Functions and Portofino, a world premiere, grew impressively from a luminous wash of colour to a striking climax.”
— Tom Service The Guardian
“…afterwards, Sinan Savaskan, the stalwart New Music composer and improvising musician, premiered The Land of the Three Fires, projection number 270 of his ongoing composition Many Stares Through Semi-Nocturnal Zeissblink, with the Contemporary Arts Ensemble from London. Go beyond the groovy title, and this startling, kinetic work for bass clarinet, trombone, tape and sound projection did live up to Savaskan’s crusade to match highly structured composition to a contradictory commitment to spontaneity. Conclusion: the real deal amid the new boys...”
— Charles Hutchinson York Evening Press
“Sinan Savaskan’s ‘Many Stares through …’ obtains its parameters from architectural projections, working out the results in slow moving, exactly proportioned instrumental lines. The score revealed many niceties of articulation and technique … ; there are few notes, but those there are demand careful, beautiful’ playing.”
— Andrew Clements, The Statesman
“…Savaskan’s music made a forceful impact characterised by dense interweaving of the parts and by vivid passage from extremes of restraint to extremes of wildness.”
— Paul Driver, The Daily Telegraph
“The evening’s most impressive piece, though, came from Sinan Savaskan, a former pupil of Cornelius Cardew whose work carries a seed of nostalgic rebellion germinating inside it. Panic in Needle Park for amplified quartet and tape, was raunchy, furiously energized ensemble writing… Vividly rich in colouring, and for the most part fixed on an insistent cello ostinato that propelled the movement forward in a tango rhythm, its e!ect was cinematic - especially its central (trio?) section, where the prerecorded tape silenced the instrumentalists with a brilliantly conceived, and in a way orchestral, abstract sound collage. It struck me as a serious but entertaining score, with a real claim to repertory status.”
— Michael John White, The Independent
“Sinan Savaskan’s The Street treated a saxophone quartet … more exhaustively, exploiting, a full range of possible e!ects and arriving at a tightly organised suite of movements with definite blues inflections at several points.”
— Andrew Clements, Financial Times
“…the contribution of the individual instruments became more refined and by the time we reached the final ballade movement there was a distinctive flavour to the music, with a popular basis.”
— Meirion Bowen, The Guardian
“Sinan Savaskan’s The Street was the best piece I have heard of his so far: di!erent views of the same material moulding its four saxophones in colourful counterpoint.”
— Keith Potter. Classical Music
“I am not sure that some of what is said here is not said better in pieces such as Sinan Savaskan’s The Street…”
— Max Harrison, Jazz Express
“The two quartets by Savaskan, his Second and shared a certain manic taste for extremes and disparity, but again were quite di!erent in most respects of tone, style and length…. No.3, with its etallized amplified sound, had a lot of rude energy…”
— Paul Griffiths The Times
““A distinctive atmosphere contributed to the e!ect of a concert in a quite di!erent environment. The cube like, black-walled, darkened theatre of London’s ICA is inseparable in my mind from a host of avant-garde experience over the years, and a new AcoustICA series has renewed them. In that cosy yet exploratory space I heard the second of a Sunday pair of programmes centred on Stockhausen. His iconic opus one, Kontra-Punkte (1953) for 10 instruments, which drop out of the texture one by one towards the end (it is Stockhausen’s Farewell Symphony), was done captivatingly by the Contemporary Arts Ensemble/London, under Zsolt Nagy. Before it came the premiere of Sinan Savaskan’s Unique Strands, Circular Functions and Portofino for 14 players - a concise structure whose rhythmic and intervallic transformation of a popular song interestingly recalled early Maxwell Davies.”
