My new CD "Modern Primitive"is now available on at iTunes, cdbaby.com, and amazon.



here are some reviews, including a recent one by paul griffiths:

Woolf: Modern Primitive (Image IRC 0502)
Randall Woolf escapes the primitive label by virtue of his virtuosity and the modern for his fond, yet amused, cherishing of the U.S. vernacular. The title track, delivering the longest of the five works here, is an alarmed Brandenburg with its roots in country music and jazz. Different instrumental groupings keep bubbling to the surface, take over for a time, but soon have their lead places usurped (though they might take a while to notice). Though the piece plays continuously, its span of close on twenty minutes has an ABA pattern of hectic music enclosing slower rotating dreams. The Pack turns out to be a crack band of New York musiciansTara OConnor on flute, Allen Blustine on clarinet, Timothy Fain on violin, Kathleen Supové on piano, et al.conducted by Ransom Wilson, and well able to deal with the jerks of form and stance the music demands. Shorter, and more of a fun item, is Hee Haw, in which the ensemble seems to be responding to instructions from a square-dance caller. There is something of the same atmosphere in No Luck, No Happiness for violin (Todd Reynolds) with a crazed percussion accompaniment from the composer on turntables, while Everything is Green weaves a gentle and touching musical coat around a love story by David Foster Wallace, featuring the naturally persuasive voices of Wilson on flute and Rinde Eckert narrating. [30.iv.06]


and from steve smith, at "time out new york":

the Randall Woolf record weve all been waiting for.
Reviewer: Steve Smith Time Out/NY
Contemporary composers have long made use of electric guitars, keyboards, and other pop-music implements. But Detroit-born New Yorker Randall Woolf is one of the few to adapt tactics such as sampling and hip-hop turntablism as viable elements in a post-modern compositional vocabulary. Hee Haw, the work that opens Woolfs new CD, provides the perfect introduction: A prerecorded square-dance caller sets a chamber orchestra aswirl, with only a brief, heartsick-ballad interlude allowing the players to catch their breath. In Stones, Woolf stitches together the coarse fiber of Robert Johnsons Delta blues and the dark shimmer of strings, winds,and keyboard. No Luck, No Happiness pits Todd Reynolds muscular violin riffs against the composers inventive beats and scratching, while in Everything Is Green, Rinde Eckerts deadpan narration of a David Foster Wallace short story is offset by a poignant enactment by flutist Ransom Wilson and pianist Kathleen Supové. The concluding title work is a 19-minute arc of bristling, Stravinskian rhythms, split by a luminous intermezzo....For fans of provocative contemporary music, Modern Primitive is the Randall Woolf record weve all been waiting for.