Meditations review in The Wire

I’m thrilled that Meditations has been reviewed in The Wire magazine by writer Julian Cowley in issue 457 (March 2022)! Here is a link to the issue and here is the text of the review.

“Chaz Underriner, who studied at CalArts with Michael Pisaro and Ann LeBaron, introduces this series of meditations with a spacious city soundscape, busy with traffic, punctuated with human voices, footsteps and the chirps of birds. His settings of texts by Marcus Aurelius, Julian of Norwich and Zen master Eihei Dōgen are scored for a quartet of vocalists, piano, percussion, cello and his own electronics. They come to occupy the foreground but don’t entirely displace the world, which continues to wash in waves (literally) through the music’s structural openings and permeable texture. As befits their texts, these pieces are designs for contemplation, quietly radiant in their animated stasis, yet mindful that the turbulent globe is still turning.”

Julian Cowley, The Wire (Issue 457), March 2022