Reviews

Tu, Paz Mia by Ileana Perez Velázquez, a Seraphic Fire commission from four years ago, is a beautifully crafted essay. The bleak phrases’ acceptance of death drew depth of feeling from the singers. 

South Florida Classical Review. November 4, 2022, by Lawrence             Budmen from “Seraphic Fire opens 20th Anniversay season with music of love and war”

Despite the concert’s focus on the past, it opened with a world premiere…Tu, paz mia by the Cuban-born composer Ileana Perez Velazquez. Processional and solemn, the work is Baroque in tone if not in harmonic language, making an effective opening for a concert devoted to its predecessors. Composed for unaccompanied chorus, it made the most of Seraphic Fire’s purity of tone, with transparent slow-moving chords. Beginning with harmonies that sounded as if from another century, the work quickly became more modern and complex, proceeding to agitated passages of uneasy tones before settling back to a hard-won tranquility.

From “A mixed bag of Latin-American Baroque from Seraphic Fire” by                          David Fleshler, South Florida Classical Review, April 14, 2019.

“And Ileana Perez Velázquez in ‘Idolos del Sueño,’ for the same instrumentation with cello added, had Ms. Mackenzie sing with an otherworldly quality mirrored in the accompaniment and sounding like a musical expression of the Latin American literary form magical realism.”
                                                 Allan Kozinn for The New York Times, May 3, 2011.

“Some of my favorite music of the evening was in the opening of “Idolos del sueño”  (“Dream Eidolons” – 2010) by Cuban-born Ileana Perez Velázquez (b. 1964). Soprano, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano conveyed the transparency of water and ephemeral reflections in an almost miraculous way, drawing the mesmerized listener into the world of Cuban poet Carlos Pintado.”
                               Rorianne Schrade for New York Concert Review, May 1, 2011.

“Ileana Perez-Velazquez’s “…Un Ser Con Unas Alas Enormes” (“…A Being With Enormous Wings”), heard on the same occasion, gave Mr. Roth’s Violin the metallic yet rubbery wings of electronic sound. Violence? Maybe not. But imaginative strength and musical consistency, yes.”
Paul Griffiths for The New York Times, March 18, 1999.

Review of Miranda Cuckson’s “Melting The Darkness” Urlicht CD in the 2014 April print edition of The Wire: Adventures In Modern Music “The three final pieces pit violin against electronics, most impressively in Ileana Perez-Velazquez’s un ser con unas alas enormes (a being with enormous wings).”

“The Saturday concert had its share of winners as well. Ileana Perez Velazquez’s . . . Un ser con unas alas enormes . . . (1996) surrounds its showy, challenging solo violin part with a fragmentary tape backing that adapts material from John Cage’s Freeman Etude No. 17. Despite its angular and dissonant sound world, this nicely constructed piece proves highly effective. ”

Concert Review by David Cleary, Computer Music Journal, The MIT Press, Vol. 26, Number 1, Spring 2002. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/7873

” …el ultimo concierto de Seraphic Fire que tuvo la delicadeza de abrirlo con una composicion en estreno mundial para enlazar presente con pasado, se trato de Tu, paz mia…. de la cubana Ileana Perez Velazquez que se hallaba presente en el recinto. Sus ecos antiguos reverberaron como callada oracion sobre un poema de Dulce Maria Loynaz.”                                                               Sebastian Spreng, for El Nuevo Herald, Miami, 5 May 2019.

“Concert brings out best in Berkshire Symphony”   The premiere of faculty composer Ileana Perez Velazquez’s violin concerto rounded out the program. On first acquaintance, the three-movement work was most notable for the dazzling, rhapsodic performance of concertmaster Joanna Kurkowicz as soloist.   Perez Velazquez titles the movements “The Journey Back to the Source,” “Inner Voices” and “Homage to Caribbean Light and Life.” The last movement, she writes, evokes the landscape of her youth.   Intricate, often Latin rhythms and exotic percussion — especially drumming — spike the music. Near the end, a drum all but battles the soloist for supremacy during a cadenza. The violin won.

Andrew Pincus for The Berkshire Eagle, 11/24/2014

American Record Guide Review of  “The music of Ileana Perez Velazquez” (Albany Records)  “…a refreshing blend of lively movement and poise in a harmonically active style that maintains clear references to tonality” (2008, vol. 71 issue 4)

“El trio para violin, chelo, y piano de Ileana Perez (1964), interpretado por Alexis Borges, Ana Ruth Bermudez y la autora al piano respectivamente, es de lo mejor incluido en la presente Jornada (Festival UNEAC 1986). En la obra se respira la buena influencia, lo cual no es censurable por la excelencia del modelo, pero lo sorprendente es la intensidad dramatica de su contenido dada la juventud de Ileana quien ha demostrado una profundidad en el tratamiento de las ideas y una madurez creativa en la organizacion del plano sonoro que a todos impacto. Ileana Perez es, sin dudas, uno de los grandes talentos de la nueva generacion de compositores y merece toda la atencion que precisa su desarrollo artistico future”
Jose Amer, Juventud Rebelde, 1986 (Cuba)