What Others Are Saying About Jerry Gerber’s Music
Ken Meltzer, Fanfare: "...Gerber composes in a highly accessible and melodic style. His virtual orchestrations are rich and varied in instrumental colors, and the scoring is unfailingly transparent."
Jacqueline Kharouf, Fanfare: "...Gerber is an artist, a pioneer exploring a field within the digital landscape."
Colin Clarke: "Gerber’s voice, and the results of his way of working, strike me as remarkably persuasive."
Linda Holt: "...Gerber is a master of using the latest electronic and digital resources to compose in the Western art music tradition."
David Baer of SoundBytes Magazine: "Like many serious composers, Jerry writes for large orchestra. But his
orchestra, by
choice, is virtual. Anyone listening to his just-released Symphony #10
will
immediately recognize his mastery of realizing a musical performance.
Jerry joins us to
share his vast expertise in the following interview. Whether you regard
a virtual
orchestral performance as a final goal or as a stepping stone to a
live-orchestraperformance,
there is much you can learn from him."
Jimmy Landry of Cakewalk: "...I knew he was a great composer from his accomplished list of credentials, but what I wasn’t prepared for was being absolutely fascinated by the sonic depth of “his sound,” the detail and integrity of his tracks, and moreover—how he accomplishes all of the above mentioned. When you listen to his work, and then hear his theoretic viewpoint of how to correctly compose and produce music, you quickly realize that this guy has tapped into something a bit deeper than most musicians."
SoundBytes Magazine: "Anyone who knows the history of classical music can tell you that a composer who decides to write a ninth symphony is risking demise shortly after completing the work. The ninth was the last one written by Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler and several more of the great ones. But that didn’t deter composer Jerry Gerber from thumbing his nose at mortality and undertaking that mission. And we can all be grateful, given the stunning music therein."
SoundBytes Magazine: "In addition to being a fine composer, he is unquestionably a master of MIDI sequencing. If you listen to any random sampling of his music, you will probably agree that he succeeds in this admirably – that is if you don’t mistake his recordings for fully symphonic performances played by live musicians to begin with."
Classical Net: "...Gerber makes extraordinarily skillful use of something called the "Vienna Instruments Symphonic Cube," and another electronically accessible package called "Requiem Professional."
Tokafi: "Number Eleven: The Path makes for a powerful and varied listen. Jerry Gerber is certainly the “real thing.” The meticulously notated scores, emotive writing, and fluency in different eras of orchestral composition make for a sound firmly rooted in the classical tradition all within the context of an all-synth score - thereby illustrating a composer with serious chops as interested in looking backward as pushing forward".
Electronic Music Foundation: "Jerry Gerber is so great at what he does that you're missing something amazing if you don't listen to this CD. He uses MIDI instruments to compose for orchestra, and he's such a master of a virtual musical world you're completely unaware it's electronic. But, then, there's nothing virtual about his music. It's real. And it's beautiful. His superb 'virtual orchestra' compositions include a multi-movement chamber setting of Chinese poetry with sounds of traditional Chinese instruments. There's also a suite for piano sounds. His style is romantic. His sounds are beautiful and expressive. Don't miss it."
Tokafi: "...Symphony #6, is a work of furious dynamics, of great plasticity and dramatic effects. In its cinematic opening movement, springing forth from a swelling string chord, the music charges between pastoral beauty and nightly sensuality, held together by a recurring motive of quickly ascending lines and pointed beats."
Classical Net: “Jerry Gerber, virtuoso MIDI-meister, gets us to drop our jaws in astonishment yet again..”
Arts & Opinion: "Jerry Gerber writes for serious music lovers, not ivory tower musicologists, and for this, the music world is more varied and richer. Which means when a young person downloads a file of orchestral music from the Internet, it may well be a symphony composed by Jerry Gerber."
Electronic Music Foundation: "Jerry Gerber is well known for his talent and skill in emulating an acoustic orchestra with electronically-generated sounds. He does it so well, in fact, that the results he gets are unique. His music has an emotional and poetic punch and his sounds make great sense together in terms of traditional orchestration. The compositions on this CD are 'Symphony No. 5' and 'Essay for Virtual Orchestra'. As Dennis Báthory-Kitsz points out, 'The symphony's masterpiece is Gravity/Zero-Gravity, a coloristic chronicle ...' Gerber animates the technology into producing something quintessentially human."
20th Century Music: "Jerry Gerber’s "Kairotic Offerings" are well-organized essays in the wonders of digital technology..."
Classical Net: "The symphony, cello sonata, and the songs just knock me out. The symphony particularly impresses, and I believe Gerber has just finished a fifth. It takes large breaths, and it shows a big artistic nature willing to take risks. The first movement – all eleven minutes of it – flows from first note to last and furthermore sports an unusual rhetorical structure. The final minute or so is both a surprise and logical outcome. The second movement, a scherzo, dances in 11/8 time. It's so well done that, had Gerber's note not informed me, I doubt I would have known. The slow third movement is a hymn that moves from great sadness to great power."
Electronic Music Foundation: "Is that a real orchestra in his studio? Believe him when he says it's electronic, but Jerry Gerber's 'Symphony #4 for the Virtual Orchestra is so artfully done, so musically sensitive and convincing, that it emerges as one of the finest examples of electronic orchestration that there is. Gerber has a fine musical ear and considerable skills in translating instrumental concepts to electronic media. Other compositions on the CD include 'Prelude' and 'Fugue' for MIDI piano. And 'Sonata for Virtual Cello & Piano' is an electronic realization of a work originally composed for acoustical instruments. The production, which means composition, orchestration, MIDI programming, recording and mastering, is by Jerry Gerber. This is a very impressive CD!"
Robert Firpo-Cappiello: "Jerry Gerber is a master of orchestration..."
Electronic Music
Foundation:
"The sounds that Gerber
has chosen portray his music with a sense of presence and realism. He is
a master of MIDI orchestration..."