“Wolfgang’s arresting, jazz-drenched new score seemed to capture at once the realities and myths of Los Angeles during fire season … This piece could also serve as the score for an archetypical 1950s L.A. detective thriller – music that’s somehow cool and sultry at the same time. Wherever your imagination takes you, Wolfgang provides the fuel … “
Richard S. Ginell, The Los Angeles Times
(on Gernot’s composition for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, DESERT WIND)
“Winning sonic arsenal from composer with jazz, film and TV music background … although there are many nods to jazz, folk and Latin music, the influences come across as partners to Gernot Wolfgang’s creative individuality … the repertoire embraces everything from puckish humour and jubilance to haunting modernism and lyrical radiance. Wolfgang is especially inventive in frisky and poetic material for such pairings as bassoon and double bass, as in Low Agenda, and viola and bassoon, which weave Three Short Stories.”
Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone
(on the CD SHORT STORIES)
“The five works on “Passing Through” are substantial, provocative, entertaining examples of the now and future of chamber music, and the album as a whole is well deserving of its 2016 Grammy nomination for “Best Classical Compendium” not only for its intense and skilled performances but for the intriguing program.”
Don Clark, icareifyoulisten.com
(on the CD PASSING THROUGH)
“Thoroughly addictive … Modern chamber music simply does not get any better than this.”
David Rowe, Classical CD Reviews
(on the CD PASSING THROUGH)
“There is a depth to this work that is really quite engaging, and convinces me that Wolfgang is a master composer with important things to communicate to his listeners … Wolfgang has a distinctive voice, and one that is truly worth hearing.”
David DeBoor Canfield, Fanfare
(on STRING THEORY, as recorded on Gernot’s CD PASSING THROUGH)
“Every now and then, a recording comes along that is really off the beaten path … so far off, in fact, that it seems to create its own genre … Wolfgang’s music is not just jazz with a little more form, or classical music that swings. He has found a way to completely blend the two types of music in such a way that there is no real delineation between them … A beautiful and deeply moving listening experience.”
Lynn Rene Bayley, The Art Music Lounge
(on the CD PASSING THROUGH)
“It’s the Second Viennese School by way of jazz, or perhaps vice versa. It incorporates some fluid, evocative harmonies, carrying the listener along on its sheer drive and inner logic”.
Stephen Francis Vasta, Musicweb-International.com
(on Gernot’s piano quartet FROM VIENNA WITH LOVE)
“There is no doubt in my mind that Wolfgang is a major composer of our times … Gernot continues to turn out an excellent array of some of the best music for bassoon of the 20th century … Gernot Wolfgang’s musical style is fundamentally atonal, but highly developmental, utilizing very interesting melodic and rhythmic motives to bind the music together. The influences of jazz and rock are clearly audible in his music, and the entire structure has a wonderful sense of finesse and completion that is often missing in the works of many modern composers. I never cease to be fascinated by the structural and musical texture I find in his compositions.”
Ronald Klimko, The Double Reed
” … it’s just like hearing ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’ for the first time once again. And we can claim without hesitation, that after listening to COMMON GROUND you will be able to answer the question whether you’ve ever experienced shivers down your spine when listening to experimental music with a full-bodied ‘Yes!’.”
Tobias Fischer, tokafi.com (on the CD COMMON GROUND)
“It’s all so refreshing, new, interesting and involving, I have a hard time turning it off … I cannot praise highly enough the accomplishments achieved here – the music, the performers (all Los Angeles-based professionals), and the recorded sound.”
David Rowe, Classical CD Reviews
(on the CD VIENNA AND THE WEST)
“If you are searching for a fresh and distinct fusion of styles, something classically based yet different, this is the album you might want to consider. Gernot Wolfgang, an Austrian-born composer now based in Los Angeles, masters an idiosyncratic fusion of the elements of the Second Viennese School with contemporary jazz in this selection of chamber music pieces featuring various combinations of instruments.”
Ivana Popovic, The Whole Note
(on the CD VIENNA AND THE WEST)
“Gernot Wolfgang knows what he’s doing … Theremin’s Journey is a mixture of old electronics, new media and traditional piano with more than enough incident to transcend its vernacular idiom into something very cool, clever and seductive.”
Rodney Punt, LA Opus
” … [Reflections is] a truly modern work which would satisfy even the most hard core audiences at the Darmstadt Festival … performers and audiences alike will enjoy the gripping emotionality of the piece.”
Ensemble Magazin, Germany
“Unconventional beauty.”
Dave Brubeck, Jazz Great
“An outstanding composer … “
Concerto and Tiroler Tageszeitung, Austria