Press Reviews Tim Brady

"Si vous n'achètez qu'un disc compact de musique contemporaine cette année, achètez Atacama: Symphonie #3 de Tim Brady!"
Fréderic Lambert - Radio-Canada - première chaîne - "Medium large" - 2013

"Brady has a distinctive musical language and he can enchant us with his expertise both as a guitarist and a composer...(he) is an extraordinarily talented guitarist and these compositions (24 Frames) show his amazing ability to play in a variety of styles. These are fascinating experiments in musical sound and I think a great many people will want to hear them."
Maria Nockin - Fanfare Magazine - 2012

"Brady's 13 excerpts from his recent work 24 Frames sometimes sounded like a cluster of guitarists, but there was only one onstage - the composer, who is also a monster soloist. His nimble-fingered virtuosity was a big part of these systematic adventures for electric guitar, with and without digital delays, unusual tunings and video imagery."
Robert Everett-Green - Globe and Mail - 2011

"First up was guitarist extraordinaire Tim Brady in a spotlit solo performed on the steps at the front of the stage. Red Melisma was wistfully bluesy and virtuosic. Full of unusual and fancy fretwork, it showcased Brady’s amazing abilities on the instrument. Amplify, Multiply, Remix and Redefine by Brady enlisted the talents of 21 electric guitarists...The work paid homage to the life and work of the late legendary guitarist Les Paul.

Opening with the gentlest of strumming, the work washed in sounds much like wind chimes blowing in the breeze. Brady as soloist, gave a virtual clinic on the instrument showing its unbelievable versatility. He is a guitar lovers delight, seemingly capable of anything. Intriguing bent notes and impressive riffs were but a few techniques demonstrated. Solid orchestration set a rather galactic mood, with strings sweeping like stars and brass loudly announcing their arrival."

"...electric guitarist Tim Brady used extensive technology to become exuberant one-man ensembles, each accompanied by video projections."

"Bradyworks' take on the 20th-century was a stunning tour de force. The continuous flow of video images streaming across the back wall behind the band amid the unrelenting stream of notes stunned the Radio Room audience into an amazed silence. The music completely filled the mind, leaving no room for stray thoughts or the least urge to daydream. It was high-enery stuff. The shock came from the stunning unison playing at high-speed of notes well oustisde the usual scale and argeggios...These phrases were angular, syncopated, metrically irregular, articulated by eccentric accents and powerful enough to elevate your pulse. It was a tour-de-fource performance."

"Composer/guitarist Tim Brady presented a strong program of recent works...As Messier's imagery developed, he used unexpected permutations of color to create a kind of equilibrium between suggestions of water and fire, a brilliant equivilant to Brady's guitar work."

"Technically staggering, Brady's control of a wealth of sound-processing devices allows him to expand the sound of one guitar into a very large soundscape. His layering of delay and oscillation, during the first composition of the performance, allowed what was initially a very small group of notes played with a relentlessly rapid tremolo (up-and-down picking) to evolve almost imperceptibly. Effects that generated no small amount of noise made the piece more about texture than tonality, even as he expanded the piece away from those initial few notes...his “Double Quartet (Hommage a Shostakovich),” on which Brady was joined by his Bradyworks group—saxophonist Andre Leroux, percussionist Catherine Meunier, sampler David Kronkite and Brigitte Poulin—that was both the performance's longest piece and its highlight.

"Chamber opera's music and video evocative: Tim Brady, our prince of accessible avant garde, is determined to keep his 2003 chamber opera "Three Cities in the Life of Dr. Norman Bethune" in circulation....unlike most self-proclaimed polystylists, this Montreal composer sounds coherent, not confused, as he draws on different resources. Sustaining interest with one character is difficult, but Brady managed by combining Broadway declamation in the vocal part with a varied instrumental backdrop that often felt animated by the rhythmic spirit of bebop. The score expressed the impassioned lonliness of the character (Bethune)."
Arthur Kaptainis - The Montreal Gazette - Oct. 2006

"Virtuosic Bradyworks on tour: Deeply personal performances of solo pieces were the night's highlights, and began early in the concert. Brady slapped, popped, plucked, chorded and pick-slid through his own composition...displayed his extensive guitar technique, never failing to provide the audience with a new trick. ...A virtuosic performance of captivating improvisations and deep explorations into sound."
Eric Lehman - Musicworks Magazine #92 - Summer 2005

"The Salome Dancer ..a very special feature of a particularly outstanding Open Ears Festival. A major multimedia production (music by Tim Brady and libretto by John Sobol), the opera provided a visceral tour through the interweaving fates and aspirations of a dancer (Tamara Hummel), a preacher (Terence Mierau), a reporter (Michael Donovan) and a cop (Ian Funk) . Superlative casting enabled tricky multimedia elements to converge into a mostly seamless whole....The Bradyworks Ensemble performed expertly, given a very tricky score which alternated between the enraged and the frenetic, to the mysterious and sustained....Breaking the mould for innovative storytelling and multimedia art, the audience left the theatre moved, stirred and thought-provoked."
Stephen Preece - The Record (Waterloo, Ontario) April 2005

"...Brady is a true mad scientist of guitar sound, placed on Earth, it seems, to smash the barriers between high and low culture. His wild guitar sounds are daggers in the heart of classical music pretense...the music has a relentless drive to it and..one has to admire the way that Brady works with Lorraine Vaillancourt's NEM to bring out their playful side."
Mike Chamberlin / HOUR Weekly 2005 - review of CD "Playing Guitar: Symphony #1"

"...Three Cities in the Life of Dr. Norman Bethune...The eight instrumentalists (including Brady), singer Donovan and conductor Pierre Simard deserve much praise for their clean performances - with special kudos to Philip Hornsey's virtuosic percussion duty."
John Terauds / The Toronto Star 2005

"...la musique de Brady n'oublie jamais qu'elle est porteuse d'une vrai charge émotionnelle. Souplesse des compositions, articulation collectives, sensibilits assumées, les partitions de Brady en appelle à la quiétude de l'instant. Importe peu alors l'orchestration choisie (une pièce pour quatuor à cordes , 3 piéces pour sextet , une pièces pour big band) et le contexte défini ( l'agressivité de "sound off" la plus ancienne composition du disque, ou les turbulences contrastes de "2 chords less than a blues") quelque chose d'apaisée perce l'écorce d'une musique que l'on devine ouverte au monde."
ImproJazz (France) 2004 - review of CD "Unison Rituals"

"The title suite (Twenty Quarter Inch Jacks) is a guitarist's fantasy - composed for 20 players, but performed here solely by Brady. Over the half-hour length he explores the sonic possibilites of 120 vibrating strings and no small amount of feedback....the piece is richly textured and intriguing, like a huge maze of sound caves.
James Hale / Downbeat 2003

Tim Brady's CD "10 Collaborations" listed in "Downbeat" magazines "Best CDs of 2001"
January 2002 issue

"Tim Brady was a very interesting discovery. He simultaneously played in a free and a tightly disciplined style...with astonishing virtuosity and brilliant mastery of tone colour, he created an elegant, flowing, often minimal music, which developed into all kinds of dramatic and sculptural forms."
Kjeld Frandsen / Berlingske Tidende (Copenhagen) 2001

"Tim Brady's Lightning Field found the right balance between musical gesture and shapely architecture in a piece that relied on the virtuosity of the players as much as on the electronic samplings that contributed additional menace to its often savage writing."
David Vance / Sydney Morning Herald 2000

"Maybe the most interesting fact about Tim Brady...is the consistency of his musical style. It is a brilliant one. And he has been at it long enough to have developed a long list of new music that works, that regularly gets through to audiences. He communicates."
Stephen Pedersen / Halifax Chronicle-Herald 2000

"L'ecoute de cette cantate (As It Happened de Tim Brady)...ne peut laisser personne indifférent, non seulement parce qu'il s'agit d'une oeuvre à contenu politique, mais parce que l'auteur est parvenu à nous en communiquer l'universailté."

Serge Camirand / Voir (Montréal) 2000

"Brady leavens the program with some virtuoso guitar playing...Huge, swooping electronic waves shimmer and peal like a carillon. Brady has become the leading proponent of gaining acceptance of the electric guitar in new music and Strange Attractors is a strong bridge between the freedom of jazz and the structure of formal composition. **** (4 stars)".
James Hale / Downbeat 1999

"Of all the talented composers attempting to storm Symphony Hall fully plugged, none surpasses his guitaristic insight and compositional craft. Brady's work for solo electric guitar, guitar and tape, and guitar with chamber and orchestral ensembles skillfully exploits the instrument's unique properties, eliciting colors and combinations unprecedented in rock and classical."
Joe Gore / Guitar Player 1997

"Check out Tim Brady's brilliant new CD Scenarios. Moving from strength to strength over a programme of six varied works for electric guitar, live electronics and tape, Scenarios is a masterful display of consummate craftsmanship, striking innovation and genuine musicality."
Andrew Hurlbut / Musicworks 1995

"Revolutionary Songs was entirely convincing. For all the song cycle's eclecticism (it) remains a remarkably disciplined piece of writing...the Bradyworks ensemble gave it a precise, even and altogether controlled performance."
Mark Miller / The Globe & Mail 1994

"Imaginary Guitars...otherworldly configurations that defy both convention and belief. Astonishing!"
Joe Gore / Guitar Player Magazine 1993

"You can hear the impressive range of Brady's explorations on his latest recording - Imaginary Guitars."
Downbeat 1993

"Brady's guitar floated in an endless melody so angular and complex, yet so calm and controlled, that I'm eager to hear it again to calculate what made it tick. What made it compelling was a secure sense of large scale harmony...brought to so original a texture. Brady's putting out so much music, so much of it good, that you're bound to run into his name again."
Kyle Gann / The Village Voice 1991