Reviews
Timothy Jones on Five Spirituals
”Jim’s arrangements of Five Spirituals fit quite nicely into a program of chamber music or as a part of an actual worship service. His use of two low instruments for rhythm, energy and warm, lyrical lines is ideal. It is great to have pieces for an instrument other than piano to add variety and another musician to otherwise standard recitals. – Jim, I love your work.“Timothy Jones, baritone
Tina Lear on The Present
"...his music is magical, and has a wry sense of humor that I didn't see coming. His music lifts my spirit and awakens my heart."Tina Lear - lyricist, composer, poet, songwriter, and friend
Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio, Cactus Pear Music Festival
As Artistic Director of Cactus Pear Music Festival, I have programmed a total of four works by James Scott Balentine since the festival's inception in 1997. It has been a pleasure to commission three new works from him, including the delightful Three Billy Goats Gruff for string quintet and narrator, which he composed expressly for our Kinder Konzert series in San Antonio. It was such a success in Texas that we brought it to Nevada in December of 2008. Audiences went wild for it! It will be on CPMF's next CD, which is scheduled to be released in January of 2009. I love working with Jim as a musician, as well as a composer and arranger. He is imaginative, creative, and versatile and can display a wonderful sense of humor in his compositions.Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio, CPMF Artistic Director
Mike Greenberg, Incident Light review of Triqueta
In the three movements of “Triqueta,” Balentine melds Modernist, jazz and folk Brazilian sensibilities. The very active rhythms and serpentine, restless lyricism are rooted in Brazil, but they also sometimes seem informed by the Second Viennese School, especially in the first movement, “Circulo Vazio -- Variations on an Expanding Universe.” The second movement, “Espirales Infinitas,” is pensive and fragrant. The finale, “Esferas da Vida,” is the most overtly Brazilian; lively outer sections, in which the percussionists lay down a difficult folk rhythm in handclaps, flank a central waltz. The timbres of the two solo instruments blend very nicely, and Balentine’s writing for both is idiomatic. Michael Gast, a former San Antonio Symphony player who is now principal horn of the Minnesota Orchestra, was a first-class collaborator with Dunne, who played with considerable fluidity and a wide color range in this new work and throughout the evening.Marian L. Martinello, Ed.D. on Full Frontal Lobes
I had the good fortune to experience a performance of Full Frontal Lobes at the Witte last week during the Jazz Meets Classical concert. What an innovative and rich approach to expressing the interactions of spoken, mathematical, and musical languages and their variations! As an educator dedicated to interdisciplinary studies, the performance of your score opened up new directions for my thinking about how the languages of different disciplines interact and inform one another. I would like to experience it again and alert my colleagues, too.Marian L. Martinello, Ed.D., Professor Emeritus, Acting Associate Dean for Research, College of Education and Human Development, University of Texas at San Antonio