Nicole Paiement: reviews

Selected Reviews

The real star of the production is conductor Nicole Paiement. She conducted the complex score with such feeling and understanding that every one of the myriad of time-signature changes vanished into a free-flowing score.
~Gregory Sullivan Isaacs, Theater Jones, March 17, 2012

Nicole Paiement leads with great care and precision…..the twenty musician orchestra was flawless, always springing forward.
~Cedric Westphal, SFist, August 20, 2011

Led by Nicole Paiement, the chamber orchestra plays Thomson's folksy score with similar abandon, infusing the composer's honky-tonk melodies with spirited lightness and precision.
~Chloe Veltman, The Bay Citizen, August 19, 2011

Under founder Nicole Paiement's attentive direction, the 22 players communicated the wheezing vitality and sheer gusto of Thomson's Midwestern folk and hymn tunes and open harmonies that fuse so brilliantly with Stein's mesmerizing syntactical excursions.
~Allan Ulrich, Financial Times, August 25, 2011

Nicole Paiement….had a wonderful touch with the music; hearing it after being so used to the recording was like seeing a familiar fresco cleaned and restored to its original fresh brilliance of color.
~ Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills, September 5, 2011

The music bloomed with striking motifs, murmurous harmonies, wit and a rich orchestral palette ... Nicole Paiement led a fervent and balanced performance.
~Steven Winn, March 1, 2011

Nicole Paiement... led her orchestra with vitality and passion.
~Ray Renati, SF Bay Times, March 3, 2011

The 14 musicians sounded lush but clean under Maestra Nicole Paiement.
~The Opera Tattler, February 27, 2011

The Orchestra, frenzied and eloquent, was outstanding ... Paiement's achievement was staggering.
~Jason Victor Serinus, January 30, 2010

Paiement, too, helped with the illusion on Saturday night, leading a performance marked by rhythmic clarity and tonal splendor. From the intricate contrapuntal writing of Berg's more learned sections, to the rollicking melodies of the tavern and the hunt, to the haunting D-minor Intermezzo that caps Wozzeck's tragedy, this was a superb rendition.
~Joshua Kosman, February 2, 2010

Nicole Paiement, conductor, premiered Chan Hae Lee’s opera Back to the Origin. Paiement led the opera towards perfection in power of expression.
~Han Sang-woo, Eumakchunchu, Monthly Music Magazine, May 2004

A large new music enterprise is afoot, six months long... launched at last Friday's concert at Old First Church. Nothing as broad as the BluePrint New Music Festival under Nicole Paiement's direction has been attempted here. The Festival draws on a wide spectrum of compositional voices and performing forces... Paiement writes that one of the goals of the Festival is "shaking-up and mixing-up the new music scene" with the active involvement and interaction of composers, performers, and students. Judging by Friday night's fine efforts, featuring works by Messiaen and some of his pupils, the "scene" is due to get some very salutary shaking and mixing.
~George Thomson, San Francisco Classical Voice, October 22, 2002

Nicole Paiement is accomplishing something remarkable on the fringes of the music scene here in the big bad city. Little noted by the print media, her ongoing music festival featuring the San Francisco Conservatory New Music Ensemble, Ensemble Parallèle, and other fine musicians under her direction presents a scope of intriguing works from Messiaen, Berio, and Bolcom to Chou Wen-chung and Chinary Ung. Along the way, the big names are intelligently referenced to as those who carry on their tradition in contemporary music. Thus, in the often chaotic and obscured landscape of new music, Paiement's programming reveals a sense of vision and foresight.
~Thomas Goss, San Francisco Classical Voice, November 18, 2002

Nicole Paiement is accomplishing something remarkable on the fringes of the music scene here in the big bad city. … her ongoing music festival featuring the SFCM New Music Ensemble, Parallèle Ensemble, and other fine musicians under her direction presents a scope of intriguing works from Messiaen, Berio, and Bolcom to Chou Wen-chung and Chinray Ung. Along the way, the big names are intelligently references as those who carry on their tradition in contemporary music. Thus, in the often chaotic and obscured landscape of new music, Paiement's programming reveals a sense of vision and foresight. Monday night's installement, ' City Composers,' kept to that vision. ….Throughout, Paiement directed with great skill and energy, allowing the sly jokes to surface along with the tide of music ecstasy.
~Thomas Goss, San Francisco Classical Voice, November 2002

...there was all the attention to details you could want in the pit, where Paiement - a small, powerful dynamo, a physical/musical double of wonderful Lita Libaek, presided over an excellent performance.
~Janos Gereben, Opera Review, San Francisco Classical Voice, June 2001

In a ferociously virtuosic performance by the Conservatory's New Music Ensemble, conducted by Nicole Paiement, "Spring Fever" exemplified all the qualities that have informed Imbrie's music at its best - impassioned lyricism, rhythmic vitality and clarity of design.
~Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, April, 2001

George Perle..returned for a birthday present Monday night. in lieu of 85 candles, he accepted a much-deserved standing ovation from a devoted audience at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and more important, excellent performances of his music.... all under Nicole Paiement's typically energetic conducting.
~Benjamin Frandzel, San Francisco Classical Voice, March, 2000

La réverbération du lieu, à peine tamisée par la salle de 400 personnes, n'entrava pourtant jamais la clarification de la polyphonie.... L'ensemble instrumental et l'ensemble choral possédaient une rafraichissante légèreté et les dialogues étaient toujours d'une parfaite lisibilité. À l'origine de ce résultat se situe indiscutablement la direction détaillée de Nicole Paiement.
~Claude Gingras, La Presse, Montréal, Mars 1997

Nicole Paiement m'avait fort impressionné la saison dernière par sa direction d'un Carmina Burana demi-scénique. Même chose hier soir. Tout d'abord, elle a dirigé les trois oeuvres de mémoire... De toute évidence, la jeune Paiement était bien préparée et savait exactement ce qui se passait à chaque instant, dans l'orchestre et dans le choeur. ... Le Copland nous valut des moments de pur raffinement chez les cordes et les bois. En contraste, la jeune maestra souligna avec énergie, à la fois à l'orchestre et au choeur, les audaces d'écriture des deux autres oeuvres, entre autres le côté "libertin" du Poulenc et la motorique aux agrégats dissonants dans le Stravinsky.
~Claude Gingras, La Presse, Montréal, Décembre, 1996

.Cette présentation de Carmina Burana qui s'adresse à l'oeil autant qu'à l'oreille est très originale et, surtout, magnifiquement réalisée, sous la direction de Nicole Paiement.
Dirigeant de mémoire, elle obtient de la masse chorale et orchestrale rassemblée devant elle des résultats étonnant à tous les niveaux: cohésion, coordination, précision rythmique, puissance sonore, subtilité dans le détail, accordant une égale attention aux séquences tonitruantes ou gracieuses. Claude Gingras, La ~Presse, Montréal, Décembre 1995

Conductor Nicole Paiement's direction last weekend...through Stavinsky's most savage neoclassical score turned out to be an over-the-top success.... Paiement elicited grand sounds from the orchestra and drove the urgent war-machine pulsation of the work's outer movements with riveting consistency. .. The entire program was guided incisively by Paiement, with clear focus on the musical issues at hand and keen attentions to her ensemble's needs. The work's seminal virtues were well established, its testy rhythmic energies harnessed with musicality and considerable precision.
~Philip Collins, Metro, Santa Cruz, December 1994.

Director Nicole Paiement... appropriately conducting the whole affair to its joyous conlusions... Indeed, all performed as if under the baton of a Toscanini or James Levine.
~Richard Lynde, Register-Pajaronian, Watsonville, March 1994