Utah Arts Review – Norman’s brilliant “Play” receives inspiring performance by Utah Symphony

by Matt Starling

Few young composers are as celebrated as Andrew Norman. The Los Angeles-based composer’s career has spanned a brief 17 years, but has only really begun to pick up steam during the last decade. Already, the 39-year-old’s music has been performed by many of the world’s great orchestras and has won a long list of prestigious awards.  

Norman’s three-movement orchestral work Play, performed by the Utah Symphony Friday evening, demonstrated to the Abravanel Hall audience just how brilliant a talent is Norman, the orchestra’s composer-in-association.  A heady mix of rigorous intellectual exploration and raw emotionality, Play is realized with a polished yet experimental approach that often relies on extended instrumental techniques to generate Norman’s imaginative sound-world.

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