REVIEWS for ASCENDING PRIMES

“This hefty new double album captures the continuing journey of New York violinist Modney (née Josh Modney), a virtuoso classical musician who’s increasingly followed a deep interest in sound qua sound…  It’s an incredibly dense, detail-packed endeavor that’s as wondrous as it is demanding.“
-Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily | The Best Contemporary Classical Albums of May 2024 | 06.03.2024 | FULL REVIEW

“Cory Smythe, Ben Lamar Gay, Nate Wooley: these are some of the names summoned by the violinist and composer from the Big Apple. Contemporary classical, avant jazz, parallel universes, escapes, vigils, drone ambushes, harsh-noise threats: A torrential and astonishing album, which sounds like nothing else and acts as a peremptory statement: there is a new school in New York.“
-Nazim Comunale, Giornale Della Musica (Italy) | Best Albums of 2024 | FULL REVIEW

“Ascender hits you with the force of a hurricane… A  work of great impact, with an inexhaustible wealth of stimuli, irreverent in its own way, masterfully recorded and conducted, Ascending Primes forcefully enters among the candidates for album of the year.“
-Vicenzo Rogero, AllAboutJazz | FULL REVIEW

“This is no glass bead game. Instead, moments of transcendent beauty, captivating violence and dense lyricism alternate with raw elegance. Modney’s compositions blur the boundaries between the notated and the spontaneous. He relies entirely on the instincts of his colleagues to breathe empathy and hope into the search for truth.”
-Kay Friedrichs, Klenkes (Germany)

“…a completely original voice both as an instrumentalist and not least as a composer… Modney appears as a voice that clearly does not compromise in any way. It’s tough, exciting and different.”
-Tor Hammerø, Nettavisen (Norway) | 05.31.2024 | FULL REVIEW

“A torrential and stunning record, which sounds like nothing else and serves as a peremptory statement: there is a new school in New York.”
-Nazim Comunale, Blow Up Magazine (Italy)

“Spectralism meets the experimental big-band traditions of Sun Ra and Michael Mantler (with an emphasis on Braxtonian rhythmic disjunction) in this ambitious project by the violinist and Executive Director of Wet Ink Ensemble. As suggested by its title, Ascending Primes is a suite of improvisational works whose ensemble sizes, movement numbers and tuning systems are all based on prime numbers in the sequence 1-3-5-7-11. Trumpeter Nate Wooley, pianist Cory Smythe and drummer Kate Gentile are among the musicians from the greater Braxton orbit that are featured in the proceedings.”
-Michael Schell, Sequenza 21 — 2024 Picks | FULL REVIEW

“With Ascending Primes, Modney plugs in and becomes a rock star… Ascending Primes presents stimulating and deeply conceived music with perfect execution and presentation from all involved.”
-James Koblin, The Necessary Blues | FULL REVIEW

“Modney is at the vanguard of this revolution.”
-James Koblin, The Necessary Blues — Top 50 Jazz and Experimental Albums of 2024 | FULL REVIEW

REVIEWS for ENGAGE

“This is a seminal offering that shows Josh Modney at the edge of forward movement for the violin today and so too the music he chooses to play is similarly situated. Put the two together and you have a guide to some of the tomorrow Nate Wooley speaks of in the notes to this fine set. Highly recommended for any serious futurist out there.”
-Grego Edwards, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Review | 5.08.2019 | FULL REVIEW

“Highly regarded for his work with Wet Ink, violinist Josh Modney’s recital recording Engage is a stirring two-hours of music… Modney’s solos are at turns meditative and fiery creations, blazing with intensity.”
-Christian Carey, Sequenza 21 | Best of 2018: Instrumental and Recital CDs | 12.30.2018 | FULL REVIEW

“Modney organized the double-album into three discrete programs, all utterly astonishing… The collection concludes with five solo improvisations where Modney pushes the boundaries of his instrument and his body without any kind of treatments, alternate tunings, or editing. As a whole, the album stands as powerful testimony to sound-seeking by one of today’s most intrepid experimentalists.”
-Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily | The Best Contemporary Classical Albums of 2018 | 12.21.2018 | FULL REVIEW

“Violinist Josh Modney has consistently demonstrated jaw-dropping technical skill and deep, exploratory impulses… but he outdoes himself on this powerful solo effort.”
-Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily | Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: August 2018 | 08.28.2018 | FULL REVIEW

“…it’s not too early to note that the violinist Josh Modney’s “Engage” contains one of the most intriguing programs of the year… This new adaptation [of Anthony Braxton’s Composition No. 222] is both respectful in its intentions and radical in its execution…”
-Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times | Wagner Gets The Blues: The Week in Classical Music | 07.27.2018 | FULL REVIEW

“…[a] highlight of 2018.”
-Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times | The Best Classical Music of 2018 | 12.05.2018 | FULL REVIEW

“This is an awesome undertaking. I recall when pop musicians were cautioned that it may be unwise to release a so called “double album” for fear that their inspiration (or talent) may not be up to the task. Well here comes Josh Modney… This 3 CD set is his solo violin debut album. And what an album it is. There is no lack of talent, skill, or imagination here… if you’re looking for a wildly skilled and imaginative musician check this set out and get ready to be wowed.”
-Allan Cronin, New Music Buff | 09.11.2018 | FULL REVIEW

“The Bach Chaconne, performed in just intonation, has a beautiful purity and command that’s combined with an engaging sense of narrative… The balance of the music here is from the frontier of new music. Modney tackles it all with a secure and versatile touch.”
-Joseph Dalton, The Albany Times Union | Violinists’ Interest Span Past, Present | 09.11.2018 | FULL REVIEW

“…the diversity of Modney’s work is its strength: he attempts to open up new possibilities for the violin in contemporary performance and does not restrict himself to one or a few techniques. [The] pieces by Modney himself… involve techniques of considerable difficulty, with a slam-bang virtuoso finale… There are plenty of unfamiliar sounds, but perhaps the most surprising pieces are those with conventional resources: Kate Soper’s Cipher (2011), in which both Modney and Soper, singing the soprano part, recite phased text, and the Bach Chaconne from the Partita for solo violin in D minor, BWV 1004, deeply unsettling in this performance in just intonation. Something of a compendium of violin techniques like Bach’s sonatas and partitas, this is entertaining and highly recommended.”
-AllMusic | 11.01.2018 | FULL REVIEW

“His conceptual abilities equal his playing skills as each program stands alone as a satisfying and adventurous listening experience…Modney has made a commanding statement with Engage and is now, in addition to all his other roles, a solo force to be reckoned with.”
-An Earful | 08.11.2018 | FULL REVIEW

“…a three disc set of solo violin by one of the cats fond of pushing limits. Bleeding edge contemporary classical material, this is a continuation of where Zappa left us at the end of “We’re Only in it for the Money”. Made up of three separate programs, expect never to cover the same ground twice.”
-Midwest Record | 07.05.2018 | FULL REVIEW

REVIEWS for EVRLY MVSIC

“Stunning… the engagement with timbre and texture is out of this world.”
-Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily | Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: November 2017 | 11.01.2017 | FULL REVIEW

“Baroque grandiosity… with a modern tension and heaviness… that resonate with the times we live in”
–BBC Radio | 11.01.2017

“clairvoyant connection and sheer instrumental prowess”
–The Quietus | 09.25.2017 | FULL REVIEW

“Renaissance Recap, the album’s second track, offers an austere beauty of plucked and bowed strings that bring to mind Renaissance lute music, but Higgins and Modney are just as likely to take this music apart right before your ears. Like Medieval surgeons, they seem to share a fascination in dissection, applying a sort of controlled violence to their extended technique creating scratches and punctures in the melody, and it makes for a truly fascinating listen.”
-Iggy Pot, Live Eye TV | 08.25.2017 | FULL REVIEW

“Modney took on the Etude No. 2 for Solo Violin [by Jörg Widmann, in a portrait concert of Widmann’s works at Carnegie Hall]. It’s an intensely challenging work, with some fearsome double stopping, and required the soloist to indulge in the occasional vocalization. The central section is a real bow-shredder, the horsehair flying as the always stylish Modney put his instrument through its paces.”
-Clive Paget, Musical America | 1.30.2020 | FULL REVIEW