Charles Zoll

"[ASIMOV AT STAR'S END] might just have the most complex program of any 12-minute piece ever written. The work’s episodic nature allows for a kaleidoscope of colors and textures. Wildly ambitious, it at least provided a storm of youthful energy."

~James L. Paulk, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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"Zoll captured the vigorous energy of Latino dance forms with throbbing rhythmic patterns played with fiery passion by the ensemble. At the heart of the piece, Zoll, who is a serious dancer, stretched the rhythm and harmony into an abstract, dream-like state, with the pulse still beating but the content in a different world—hazy and elevated, beyond foot stomping and hip shaking."

~Be'eri Moalem, San Francisco Classical Voice

"Bailes... (2013) is a lively and varied, five-movement dance suite, with each movement given an evocative bilingual title. ... the whole work is eminently danceable and would be fine for a modern dance ensemble. Each movement has sections highly evocative of entrances and exits, featured solos, and dramatic lighting shifts—perhaps in part because of Zoll's own background as a dance accompanist. His scoring made skilled use of the oboe, piano, violin, and cello that it employed."

~Basil Condisine, The Boston Musical Intelligencer

"... the overriding element is the interplay of rhythms, often dark and intensely visceral in their complex, driving undercurrent ..."

~Mark Gresham, ArtsATL

"Classical music fans, remember this name."

~Encore Atlanta

"Zoll's work ... embodied high-school frustration with its squawking oboe (Miri Kudo) and percussive pizzicato from the violin (Jae Young Cosmos Lee) and cello (Jan Müller-Szeraws), not to mention the frequent changes of meter, and Geoffrey Burleson’s reaching under the piano lid to strike the strings with mallets."

~Jeffrey Gantz, The Boston Globe

"Propulsive Latin dance rhythms laid down by piano and percussion were the most immediately appealing aspect of Zoll's five-movement piece. ... Most likely, however, it was Zoll's skillful and imaginative handling of the instruments for tone color, counter-point, and special effects that earned him

the top prize."

~David Wright, Boston Classical Review

"The 'zapateado pensativo' is especially striking, with the cello’s initial pulsings gradually accumulating oboe, violin and piano, all very much doing their own things."

~Scott Cantrell, The Dallas Morning News