…sparks of electricity. Martlew drew from a deep well of expressive intensity…A shimmering performance…uncommon sensitivity.” THE STRAD
But the hit was Shift, Trip …Catch, a sassy, Big Apple-style blast whose helter-skelter jazz score by Zoe Martlew – who also played cello on stage – set a pace that nearly set the floor on fire.” INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
…typify what makes the Park Lane Group’s concerts so rewarding: bold and unpredictable…a strong narrative line…” THE OBSERVER
…Martlew realized this terrifyingly bleak work in a performance that sent us reeling numb into the interval.” THE TIMES
Another discovery was cellist Zoe Martlew: wonderful technique coupled with expressiveness and clear understanding of the problems and new beauties of this music.” LUZERNER ZEITUNG
“.. a dazzling set of five cabaret songs with text and music by Zoë Martlew..” CLASSICAL MUSIC MAGAZINE
“Zoë Martlew, an English composer who had conducted an amusing, hour-long public interview with Mr. Ayres, had pride of place at the concert, which began with her “Völuspá” string trio … evokes the tale’s philosophical spirit in a spare, slow-moving texture in which repeated, slowly morphing pizzicato figures in each instrument are interrupted by the glassy tone of sustained artificial harmonics. A bowed section that closes the piece is more overtly melodic, but equally sober, until the final pages, in which the music rises to a plangent emotional peak.” WALL STREET JOURNAL
“…the richest and longest sustained pizzicato notes I have ever heard from a cello…Martlew has now acquired a sound to die for. Many times during the evening the music seemed to pause a moment for her cello to throw out just such sounds whose path through time and space the avid ear would trace to the last phonon.” SEEN & HEARD (MUSIC ON THE WEB)
Martlew’s material became a searching surface level element amidst dark, chugging pizzicati depths, while in the third…. Martlew ensured its plangency overcame the sense of being manipulative or cliché, bringing the work to a decidedly poignant and mournful end. … Following Martlew’s performance, i can’t wait to hear more.” 5:4 . (Full review)
Antonia Franceschi mined an electrifying composition by cellist Zoë Martlew for emotional information in Shift Trip. Downstage, Martlew occasionally drew focus away from the trio of dancers in their skivvies, as her cello bristled, sobbed, scraped, and tangled with a recording that incorporated an array of percussion and sounds like the drone of car horns on a freeway at rush hour. The jagged choreography looked familiar… the score, however, made it seem new” KQED (U.S.A.)
“Admiration needs to be expressed to ‘cellist Zoe Martlew in co-ordinating live performance with a recorded track. There were points where the dancers almost seemed about to eat her!” BALLET MAGAZINE
“I was enchanted” MILLBROOK INDEPENDENT (re US premiere of her string trio “Völuspä” at Tanglewood Festival).
” Zoë Martlew evoked the world of cabaret in probably the first ever portrait of that peculiar phenomenon, so proximate to BCMG’s environs, the Birmingham Slag. Laden with bangs and sniffs and sighs and scratches (courtesy of sand blocks; i don’t even want to imagine what those sounds are meant to represent), her Broad St. Burlesque occupied a seemingly post-apocalyptic landscape, dominated by a bass clarinet that seemed to be trying different approaches – some melodic, others less elegant – of making a pass at everyone in the vicinity. When that failed, the ensemble abandoned all attempts at gentility for an entirely percussive epilogue culminating in a surfeit of blown kisses, the last of which was a unison smacker on the lips of the entire audience. Not since Thomas Adès’ Powder Her Face have i heard anything so gleefully tawdry. Fabulous.” Simon Cummings, 5:4
We hit an excellent evening of work in progress. Zoë Martlew proves herself an accomplished actress, assuming various characterisations, some of them hilarious, and delivering text with aplomb.” SEEN & HEARD
….Zoe Martlew’s Broad Street Burlesque (not the first evocation of what the composer deliciously describes as “the city’s principal party slag drag” — Thomas Ades had already incorporated it into his Asyla, premiered long ago by the CBSO under Rattle). This was a decidedly fun piece, plinkey-plunkety street sounds framing proceedings, and ending with “Yo’ wha”” scowls; in between came what was actually a touching oboe-led dance…” Birmingham Post
Saturday’s final event was, well, stimulating. If you like PVC and whips, that is (and who doesn’t, after all?) It was the astonishing Zoë Martlew (billed as ‘cellist/performer, a virtuoso show of understatement) in her spectacular ‘Zoë Unleashed …. Unhinged, uncensored, underwired!’ No kiddies shuffling in their pew for this one … some of Martlew’s own compositions (for which she included tape playback) vied with sassy songs and hot chat. The whole was so well prepared, and given with such confidence, that this was an unforgettable experience. Martlew had to cope with an awkward performing space, but with those hot pants, how can that possibly be a bad thing?” SEEN & HEARD INTERNATIONAL
The Walton cello concerto was amongst the composer’s later works and shows him as a complete master of his art. His hallmarks of frequent key and time signature changes, were a challenge amply met by our orchestra. Above this subtle texture rode the evening’s prestigious soloist, Zoe Martlew. She is best known for her charm, effervescence and musical perceptiveness as shown in her role as a judge in the BBC Maestro series. It was the greatest delight to hear her superb easy style, belying the many hours she must have put in to have memorised such a work. The orchestra had clearly done their practising as they made a perfect dialogue with Zoe. She smiled and bounced in her seat as the tricky score unfolded. After such a masterful performance, including extended passages on the top string of her cello, it was hardly surprising that she attracted riotous applause.” HERTFORD GAZETTE
…with sounds never heard before on the concert platform, Miss Martlew reduced the audience to quivering jelly.” EAST ANGLIAN DAILY TIMES