Praise for
Sarah Meneely-Kyder ~
"Another highlight comes with Sarah Meneely- Kyder's Letter from Italy, 1944. The Walt Witman-ish text is by the composer's sister, who assembled it from their father's wartime letters and diary entries. The setting is a sensitive one, as befits the subject, and it is gorgeously sung by baritone Chai-lun Yueh. Trenchantly dramatic, eerie, frightening and warmly lyrical as the text requires, Meneely-Kyder's music goes beneath the surface and explores the complex emotions of the poem's narrator..." Fanfare - Raymond Tuttle, July/August 2003
"The inexplicable essence that defines American music is pondered on the North/South Recordings new release Millennium Overture. Compositions by Allan Crossman and Sarah Meneely-Kyder round out this wide ranging collection of American music" NewMusicBox - American Music Center, February 2003
Regarding 'Weep, The Mighty Typhoons'..."The work itself is simply gorgeous. Meneely-Kyder is a brilliant exponent of her own very resourceful keyboard writing, which combines an essentially consonant harmonic language with many extended performance techniques used in the coloristic manner often associated with George Crumb." John Story - Fanfare, March/April 1998
"The entire program was a feast for the soul. The intensely personal nature of Meneely-Kyder's work and the wide-ranging spiritual messages she has to deliver add to her already established reputation as one of our finest contemporary composers." Susan Hulsman Bingham - April 8, 1989
" 'Weep, The Mighty Typhoons', by Ms. Kyder is a work of great eerie power. The audacious structure was built by merging haiku in a cycle of seasons with poems by survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as adapted by the composer...A lost child was invoked as a related theme. This text was developed with the soprano, Laura Cook, who commissioned the work...Ms. Meneely-Kyder, who performed the piano part, attempted precise remarkable effects, as of Oriental instruments, by reaching inside the piano to pluck or damp the strings in combination with playing on the keyboard." Michael Smith - New London Day 1984
"Almost as surprising were works from the '50's,....while an Arioso and Allegro from 1955 (beautifully played by pianist Sarah Meneely-Kyder) was pastoral in an early-Wolpe vein, with a Coplandy climax; it deserves to become a minor classic of American Keyboard repertoire" Kyle Gann - Village Voice
" One work was by a young woman, Sarah Meneely, who was just finishing her senior year at Goucher when her 3 Movements for Piano and Orchestra was played. She may well turn out to be a genuinely great composer..."..."Sarah Meneely is in a class by herself, if only because she is not yet out of classes. 3 Movements for Piano and Orchestra, at least parts of which are serialized, is her third composition, and, though it is hard to believe after hearing some of her brilliantly original textures, her first orchestral work...This is a good piece by any standards and without any allowances for its composer's inexperience. Clearly, hers is a name to remember." Donald Mintz - Washington Post 1967