Reviews & Quotes

"Mr. Boyle's writing is rich in color and undeniably appealing."
ALLAN KOZNIN – The New York Times

"Benjamin Boyle was the pianist for his own Sonata-Fantasy with violinist Tim Fain, who earns special praise for committing the complex 18-minute work to memory. Boyle's lush, romantic style, redolent of Franck and Ravel was instantly enjoyable."
ROBERT BATTEY – The Washington Post

"a beautiful commissioned work by a young, American composer.... a jeweler-worthy setting of the medieval carol "The Holly and the Ivy" by Philadelphia's Benjamin C.S. Boyle."
ANDREW PATNER – The Chicago Sun-Times

"Benjamin C.S. Boyle's Sonata-Fantasy. Scored for violin and piano, this passionately romantic three-part work joins modern passions to 19th-century expression and piquant pinch of "Der Rosenkavalier" tossed in. It was enthusiastically executed by violinist Tim Fain with the composer at the piano."
T.L. PONICK – The Washington Times

"A young American composer, Benjamin C.S. Boyle, created his Sonata for Cello and Piano especially for [Efe] Baltacigil. This proved a succinct, attractive work in three movements, conventional in utterance, deftly crafted for the two instruments and rather Shostakovichian in its harmonic language. … This is modest, likable music from a promising composer, and there's nothing wrong with that."
TIM PAGE – The Washington Post

"Lo, How a rose e'er blooming, by Benjamin Boyle ,was commissioned for the Crossing, its words adapted from a 15th-century German carol extolling the beauty of nature in winter - and kept aloft with harmonies that skirted strong major/minor-key affiliations and the emotional implications that go with them. So the music inhabited an emotion-free zone, not cold or cerebral, but warmly detached from day-to-day humanity. When it ended, you felt like you'd been on vacation."
DAVID PATRICK STEARNS – The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Benjamin C. S. Boyle’s Ballade, a piano work performed by Chu-Fang Huang, sails along on the power of its melodious themes at first but gradually heads toward more interesting and varied textures built of darker, thicker harmonies and rumbling basses."
ALLAN KOZNIN – The New York Times

"Exchanging his oboe for a baton, Mr. Lande led the players in the raison d’être of the New York excursion, Boyle’s cantata. I had a reason to expect much from this work, based on other compositions of his, especially his outstanding Edgar Allan Poe song cycle for baritone and piano Lenoriana. As it turns out, To One in Paradise, one of the few Poe poems not yet set to music, came to his attention during the composition of that cycle but proved too substantial to fit within the restrictions of the baritone songs. The commission of a cantata by Bachanalia must have come very conveniently, and thus this work was born. It did not disappoint. …  one cannot miss for a second that these are fresh, modern compositions that service almost everything I love in ‘music with a pulse’. The cantata does not pander to the ear in the syrupy way a John Rutter does; it has substance and something to say. ‘Substance’ is of course difficult to gauge, but by the measure of being logical, clearly structured, and developing new musical ideas, it passes with flying colors as far as these ears are concerned."
JENS F. LAURSON   - Ionarts.com

“The sole contemporary work played by [Efe] Baltacigil and [Anna] Polonsky was a cello sonata by the youthful American composer Benjamin C.S. Boyle. This relatively new piece seems to be far more tonal, pleasant and accessible than a great deal of what has come out of academia during the past couple of decades but still seems the result of a rather rigorous musical mind. Based upon the musicians' performance of the work, this is music that deserves further hearing.”
GARAUD MacTAGGART – The Buffalo News

“[The composer is] not interested in spearheading the new avant-garde, but writes with great assurance, a fine sense of dramatic shape, and a good ear for melody. There were many passages where the composer was able to get new and memorable sounds out of an old medium... I shall certainly be listening to it again.”
ROGER BRUNYATE – Opera Director of the Peabody Conservatory

“Mr. Boyle seems somehow to have escaped academia's toxic postmodernist flotsam almost entirely, creating tuneful work with charm, power, and an occasional chilling frisson of the gothic.”
-Washington Times

"The contemporary Ballade (2004) by Benjamin C.S. Boyle fit nicely with the Debussy. [Chu-Fang] Huang's expressive style proved well suited to the music's dark rumination and burst of bravura."
LAWRENCE A. JOHNSON – The Miami Herald

“[The composer is] one of the few truly great song writers of the current times.”
PHYLLIS BRYN-JULSON - Head of the Dept. of Voice, Peabody Conservatory