GENERAL PRESS
5/30/24:
International Clarinet Association
Canyon Voices, depicting Cottonwood Canyon State Park in Oregon, is the strongest selection on the album, Voices of the Land. There is a pulsing “heartbeat” throughout the seven-minute work, and Juventas’s clarinetist, Celine Ferro, is featured in a beautiful bass clarinet solo midway through the piece. Canyon Voices showcases Rusnak’s strengths as a composer including lyrical and conversational melodic lines and slowly expanding repetitive motives. As an ensemble, this piece showcases the performers careful attention to blend and collaborative playing. Canyon Voices is a stunning testament to the beauty of both nature and music that individuals can independently express themselves, while also coming together as a holistic entity…Voices of the Land is an album worth listening and considering, and Juventas is an ensemble to watch in the future.
5/26/24:
TAKE EFFECT
Voices Of The Land
The composer Christina Rusnak walks us through America and pays tribute to its people and land, where the Juventas New Music Ensemble fleshes out the rich and rhythmic listen with much detail.
A listen that certainly embraces some nature-esque moments just as it does culture, history, and art, Voices Of The Land is as complicated as the country it revolves around and lends itself to reflection.
9/8/23:
Five new greats:
- Thomas Fehlmann – Umdrehen (Edition DUR)
- glacis – interpretations (Whitelabrecs)
- Pauline Hogstrand – Áhkká (Warm Winters Ltd.)
- Christina Rusnak – Voices of the Land (Navona Records)
- Spime.IM – Grey Line (-OUS)
2/15/22:
Podcast: Melodology Podcast, Episode 1, Let It Go!
2/4/20:
The Inside Story: Christina Rusnak and MOTO CELESTE
https://www.parmarecordings.com/the-inside-story-christina-rusnak-and-moto-celeste/
1/29/20:
TAKE EFFECT:
“Glacier Blue” is divided into 3 parts where the cello is highlighted with its sublime and expressive delivery.
https://takeeffectreviews.com/january-2020-3/2020/1/29/moto-celeste
3/31/17:
Third Angle Buzz- Solo Hikes and Glacier Blue
“Discovering a place as vast and richly diverse as Glacier National Park could be a lifelong endeavor. Each visit brings new vistas, or a variation on previous experiences. I traveled to Glacier for my solo hikes both in June and September 2017 to vary my experience of the park. I decided to create this piece with three different movements to attempt to capture diverse facets of the park. Everyone thinks of the glaciers, or rather the melting of the glaciers, so I decided to not focus on the climate change impact on the park, but on the physical elements that tie it together – the mountains, sky and water and the color blue. The mountains appear blue on the horizon; the blue sky morphs during the day and night; glacial ice appears blue because the dense compacted ice of the glacier absorbs all the other colors except blue.
The concerts on April 6th and 7th will be diverse with additional solo hikes from Matt Marble and Brian McWhorter. I’m very excited that cellist Marilyn de Oliveira will be performing Glacier Blue’s premiere. It’ll be fun!” http://thirdangle.org/buzz/buzz/solo-hikes-and-glacier-blue/535/
12/20/16:
New Music USA 2015-2016 Year in Review
New Music USA is proud to bring forward the voices of artists in our community. In an essay published on NewMusicBox this past year, Christina Rusnak reflects on how composers and performers are “looking at the diverse landscapes in which we live, with their complex human histories and changing values, as the grounds to examine the intersection of place and people—past and present.”
https://www.newmusicusa.org/yir/2015-2016-year-in-review/
12/15/16:
Winnipeg Free Press, “The close harmonies during a cappella vocal set Dearly Beloved and Dearly Departed shimmers as waves on an ocean…”
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/music/new_music_Dec15-2016.html
11/17/16:
For the annual National Take A Hike Day, we are celebrating Christina Rusnak, Stephen Lias, and Sidney Balin, who are all a bit more daring than most.
https://parmarecordings-news.
10/14/16
Cinemusical: http://maestrosteve.xanga.com/
9/1/16
Landscape Music, http://www.orartswatch.org/tag/cascadia-composers/
11/20/14
http://transcentury.blogspot.com/2014/11/mingled-musics.html
…few listeners who do not know Christina Rusnak’s esthetic will want to spend $12.99 for 26 minutes of her music arranged for big band and large jazz ensemble. But this Big Round Records release will be attractive to people who respond to Rusnak’s atmospheric compositional sense and the ways in which she tries to reflect aspects of modern life through instrumentation. Thus, Chat uses instruments to represent intermingling human voices and experiences as found in Internet chat rooms. Chill is intended to showcase “cool jazz,” with jazz’s typical mixture of relaxed sections and livelier ones with a “swing” feeling to them. Highline is designed to represent outdoor spaces and the opportunities they offer in a crowded urban environment for reflection and aimless wandering. The works are pleasant to hear even without knowing their intended topics, and they sound quite good in these arrangements by Dave Richards.
11/19/14
Midwest Record http://midwestrecord.com/MWR889.html
CHRISTINA RUSNAK/Chat Chill Highline: Very strange. Rusnak has all the trappings of an art chick but her music doesn’t give you the impression that she’d throw it all over for an old guy with a boat and a pocketful of diamonds. Even with museum commissions, Rusnak makes the kind of cogent jazz you’d expect from a young lion trying to maintain his cred while trying to go commercial. Might this might be left leaning, sitting down jazz, it’s also real jazz that uses it’s creative edge for a weapon of good. She’s got something special on the ball and we like what we hear. Check it out.