Connie Beckley, Performance
Artist
From past reviews...
"...Connie Beckley is a
composer and performance artist of distinct individuality; her work is suffused
with a cool methodology that can clarify emotion or confound it ... [her]
performances occupy that elusive but powerful nether world between theater and
music-- a form of small scaled but intense lyric drama that may some day soon
blossom into full-dress opera."
-- John Rockwell, New York Times
ÒThe textÉis gorgeousÉ.a
transcendent qualityÓ
--Robert Kirzinger, Fanfare
ÒÉevocatively modal,
chantlike music É a powerful, concise reflection of the text.Ó
--Allan Kozinn, New York Times
ÒBeckleyÕs Aquarium is like a spectacle in miniature, a small-scale world
as rich, complex and visually alluring as its eponymous central imageÉÓ
-- Leslie Satin, Women and Performance
ÒÉthe music to which she has set
these poems has a simple, post-Minimalist, eclectic charmÉ.. echoes of
ÔEinsteinÕ -era Philip GlassÓ
-- New York Times
ÒÉevoked all manner of emotions, some more purely esthetic,
others sweet or moving or troubling.Ó
-- John
Rockwell, New York Times
ÒBeckley transcends clichŽs of the feminine and the
individual...her work is not about the expression of self. Nor is it
politically didactic. Rather, through sound and image she establishes a
confiding tone, and within that personal time and space, she collages
metaphoric images that invite interpretation from many points of view.Ó
-- Tiffany Bell, Art in America
ÒÉpure, equilibrŽe et É sophistiquŽeÓ
--Laurence Golstenne, Art press 154
ÒSweetly drawn imagesÉ charmingly unpretentiousÓ
--Kyle Gann, The Village Voice
ÒÉelegant and evocative set
... rendered in metal, rubber, and light.Ó
-- Leslie Satin, Women and Performance
Ò...Beckley has shown that she can negotiate these difficult
passages between music and Ôart,Õ ÔrealÕ time and manipulated time – with
intelligence, toughness and grace.Ó
--Jane Bell, Art News
ÒThe AquariumÉcombined
music, sculpture and poetry...elevating repetition and dailiness to a position
of significance and wonder.Ó
-- Tiffany Bell, Art in America
ÒÉpowerful, intelligent and
witty...Ó
--Helen Wright, Vanguard
ÒBeckleyÕs music is indebted
to Philip Glass, with whom she worked as a performer in Einstein on the Beach
in the mid-70Õs. Integrated within
the slow, repetitive intonation, however, are oompah rhythms and melodies like
those from jazz, folk or even Renaissance musicÉÓ
-- Tiffany Bell, Art in America
Ò...striking images...Ó
-- New York Times
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