“Steven Burke has that rarest of inventive gifts, a personal voice. Beneath the orchestral mastery of Clockwise - an ASCAP commission in honor of his teacher Jacob Druckman - lurks an antic energy, full of mischief and surprise. Epilogue a touching concert piece for clarinet and chamber orchestra, shows another side: wistful melancholy and languid sighs. A man of many moods, Burke creates already his own musical universe.”

“...might have been written by Brahms after hearing the Rite of Spring.” The work is “highly accomplished and including some novel sonorities…bursting with historical awareness and creative confidence.”

“The writing has power..stinging emotions.”

“...a young composer, who, somehow, learned as much from the outrageously Romantic David Del Tredici as he did from the coolheaded modernist Jacob Druckman.”

“A major talent!”

“Composers come and composers go. It’s rare, though, to hear music so distinctive, passionate, and compelling that suggests its composer is a voice for his generation. Steven Burke is one such fellow. Burke - completely trusting of his musical instinct, supported by brilliant technique - writes paradoxical music: wild, fresh and unexpected, yet completely controlled.”

“The bustling, deliciously skewed rhythms… tugged at each other in this high-energy game of tag…that mixed Copland, Stravinsky and frisky jazz syncopations.”

“High-powered.”

“The music was extremely expressive, even elegiac.”