"Visconti's writing was both mature and youthful, bristling with exhilarating musical ideas and a powerfully crafted lyricism. The performance rocked, and the piece made a strong impact."

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A dazzling kaleidoscope of colors and styles, each filtered through the lens of a remarkable musical imagination."

—American Record Guide

"Vivid...a cheerful and colorful assault on the senses."

—The New York Times

"Haunting, hypnotic...in Visconti's hands, a hymn-like tune of disarming simplicity becomes transfigured into an outpouring of awesome catclysmic violence."

—Musical America

"Combines the thrill, confusion and driving power of rock with the carefully-crafted lyricism of Tin Pan Alley."

—The Stranger

"Visconti's new scores are varied and skillful...Graffiti is the more modern of the two, a bold investigation of layered effects and colors woven into a clamorous and delicate narrative. His Storm Windows is somewhat more conventional in musical language but equally affecting in expressive impact. Set to a text by the late U.S. poet laureate, Howard Nemerov, the piece wraps warm string lines around the idyllic verses, until offstage chimes, bells and trombones evoke an aura of languid nostalgia."

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The big message of Dan Visconti's Fractured Jams was that new music can have some wit. There are smart references to popular music forms, as well as riffs on ragtime and, of all things, farm animals."

—The Washington Post

"The program began with a wily sonic entertainment by a musician just 25. Like so many of his contemporaries, he scorns the border between classical and pop. His bluesy Black Bend, first heard here in December, is a savory stew of found sounds—insects, train whistles, the clickety-clack of steel on steel—seasoned with improvisatory elements and finished with attitude. Originally for string quartet, it sounded completely at home in its orchestral dress. The performance rocked."

—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Even though Ballads and Broken Rhymes may have a populist orientation, a riff on a gospel tune or something sweetly lyrical, any sense of quotation is short-lived. It is only a starting place for Visconti to make his own explorations, not only melodically and rhythmically but to experiment with the concept of a string quartet. The group's reading was lively, bridging the diversity of materials with deftness and security."

—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Dan Visconti also introduced his Black Bend, inspired by tales of a disastrous train wreck in Ohio. This was one of the evening's finest and most powerful pieces, distinguished by a slow build, like a train gaining steam, and a bluesy bass line."

—The Spokesman-Review

"Entertaining work that erupts in fits and starts and explosions of sound."

—Seattle Times

"Composer Dan Visconti called on sacred and secular music of Anne Arundel County and sea chanteys of Chesapeake fishermen to create The Breadth of Breaking Waves. The work was affecting and uncluttered. A primitive, mystical quality colored and offset thundering crashes and glittering chime sounds."

—The Washington Post

"A clever and enjoyable piece of performance art...distinctly effective."

—Crosscut

"The sound of a needle as it hits the vinyl—those familiar snaps, crackles, and the discordant, unexpected pops that resonate fluidity and jaggedness simultaneously. The syncopated scratchiness that plays accompanist to the guttural chords pulled from a throbbing blues guitar. Lyrics steeped in masculinity, yet with an undeniable undercurrent of fragility and vulnerability. That is the substance of composer Dan Visconti’s newest work, Love Bleeds Radiant, a piece commissioned for the Kronos Quartet that captures the strident contradictions blues music evokes....the work is a heartfelt tribute to the past that bumps flush, and sometimes violently, with the present."

—STRINGS Magazine