★★★★★
At first blush, Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin played on the humble mandolin might be akin to making a Rusty Nail with single-malt scotch. A successful performance will require, at the very least, great virtuosity and vision: both of which Chris Thile possesses in impressive amounts. Banjoist Bela Fleck's superb 2001 recording Perpetual Motion (Sony) demonstrated that in the hands of a superior musician, Baroque fare shines like a new dime (Fleck even covers Bach's "Prelude" from...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2013-09-20
★★★★★
The indefinitely defunct bluegrass trio Nickel Creek released three albums before splitting up, each raising the stakes of the previous until the masterful Why Should the Fire Die? wowed in its ability to encapsulate the group's inimitable sound. A good portion of what got critics and the general public enthralled about that record, as well as the two preceding it, was the fact that the aggregate age of the people involved added up to the expected age of a traditional bluegrass musician...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-08-09
★★★★★
Chris Thile, the celebrated mandolin player from The Punch Brothers and Nickel Creek isn't the first popular musician to cross over into classical music, but he might be the only one who has done it successfully. Genre-jumping of any kind is an extremely risky venture, and you don't have to look very far to find examples of artists who have failed miserably when they've attempted to deviate from their established styles and images...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2013-08-10
★★★★★
Once again, the protean malleability of J.S. Bach's genius is demonstrated by the unusual transcription of his work - in this case, the Violin Sonatas and Partitas - to another instrument, the mandolin. The Punch Brothers' mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile was first drawn to Bach by the rhythmic "groove" of Glenn Gould's 1981 re-recording of The Goldberg Variations...
- www.independent.co.uk
2013-08-10
★★★★★
Skills. Don't try and fiddle with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach without them. As one of the most technically-demanding composers in the history of music, it is instantly evident to the ear if a musician is pussyfooting about with the Baroque kingpin. That's why American mandolin player Chris Thile had his plate full when he decided to tackle Bach's solo sonatas and partitas...
- www.musicomh.com
2013-08-06
★★★★★
Reasons Why's release accompanies the pop bluegrass trio's announcement that it is going on "hiatus," which many have taken as a euphemism for splitting up. Whatever the case, the greatest hits collection captures their strengths and weaknesses well. The songs are reliably pretty and immaculately sung and performed...
- www.offbeat.com
2010-11-09
★★★★★
Best known as one-third of Nickel Creek, Chris Thile is a mandolin prodigy who recorded his ?rst album when he was only 13 years old. On How to Grow a Woman from the Ground, Thile moves with unsurprising con?dence from bluegrass to jazz to classical arrangements, but he shows much less mastery over his pop compositions. "Stay Away" showcases a startlingly graceful melody, but his cover of The White Stripes' "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" comes off as mere novelty, the title track sounds ......
- www.pastemagazine.com
2009-06-17
★★★★★
Anyone who thought Chris Thile was straying too far from his roots will likely celebrate the news that he has put together a five-piece bluegrass band for his latest release. But before you shed any tears of joy for the prodigal son's return, be warned: while this is technically a bluegrass record, it's far from traditional, despite its instrumentation and cover of the Jimmie Rodgers classic "Brakeman's Blues...
- www.globalrhythm.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
You wait an eternity for a bluegrass child prodigy and then... along comes Chris Thile with his fifth solo record, to say nothing of his five albums with Nickel Creek (formed with fellow third-graders at age eight) and umpteen collaborative efforts (including covers of work by J.S. Bach and Charlie Parker). However, the superbly titled How to Grow a Woman serves as an excellent entry point to Thile's body of work...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2009-06-12
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