Press for Leftover Beats:

• → Vic Albani, All About Jazz, 31 January 2022, Gabriel Zucker: Leftover Beats From The Edges Of Time
“From the second listening it reveals itself as an immensely coherent work, maniacally accurate, and the result of an internal balancing of artistic skill and attentive world observation... To make it even simpler, we could say Zucker’s work is a fascinating sound installation of the world around us. ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ” [translated from the Italian]
• → Roger Batty, Musique Machine, 23 February 2022, Gabriel Zucker - Leftover Beats From The Edges Of Time
“Leftover Beats From The Edge Of Time is daring, often heavily layered and at times chaotic record — which both challenges and entertains. I can’t say it’ll be a record that will work for everyone, due to its blending of the often harmonic and non-harmonic — but I found it a real revelation, that’s primed perfectly for when you want something multi-layered and unpredictable.”
• → Mike Borella, Avant Music News, 3 January 2022, Avant Music News Best of 2021: Albums of the Year
• → Dave Sumner, Bandcamp, 11 November 2021, The Best Jazz on Bandcamp: October 2021
“a music soundscape that has a massive presence, an eccentric personality, and the heart of a storyteller”
• → Dee Dee McNeil, Musical Memoirs, 14 November 2021, The Changing Face of Jazz
• → Mike Borella, Avant Music News, 22 August 2021, AMN Reviews
“There is so much to unpack over this album’s 90 minutes, that I can say no more than to grab this one as soon as it is out in late September. This is dense, modern orchestral music on steroids. Two thumbs way up.”

Press for Cities and Deserts:

• → Mike Borella, Avant Music News, 24 July 2022, AMN Reviews: Gabriel Zucker and Attila Gyárfás – Cities and Deserts
“an effort that is offbeat, avant-garde, and technical, while still pulling at the emotions...Two thumbs up and highly recommended.”
• → Jazz.hu, 1 January 2023, Reader Poll: #5 Hungarian Jazz Record of 2022

Press for Weighting:

• → Troy Dostert, All About Jazz, 18 December 2019, Troy Dostert’s Best Releases Of 2019
“pianist Zucker creates a compelling, mysterious world that is as beautiful as it is elusive... A captivating album that reveals more of its charms with each encounter.”
• → Troy Dostert, All About Jazz, 15 April 2019, Gabriel Zucker: Weighting
★ ★ ★ ★ ½ “Together the four musicians explore Zucker’s unique dreamworld with a distinctive combination of precision and freedom... It’s a magical recording, and one that should garner the heightened attention that Zucker and his colleagues rightly deserve.”
• → David Cristol, Jazz Magazine, May 2019, Gabriel Zucker: Weighting
“While Zucker proves himself up for any challenge as a leader and instrumentalist, he is no less impressive as a composer, in the wealth of his ideas. The avant-garde has not had its last word; Weighting is undoubtedly a discovery.” [translated from the French]
• → Troy Collins, Point of Departure, March 2019, Moment’s Notice
“Unimpeded by traditional notions of Western harmonic theory, Weighting expertly balances avant-garde abstraction with neoclassical formalism, reflecting a committed artistry of tempestuous romanticism. Zucker’s writing is knotty and unconventional, symbolically acknowledging the loft jazz of the '70s without directly emulating it.”
• → Textura, January 2019, Gabriel Zucker: Weighting
“Weighting presents music of such raw, elemental force it often feels like it's welled up from the earth like a geophysical event.”
• → Avant Music News, 2 January 2019, Best of 2018: Part II - Albums of the Year
• → Jazz Trail, 29 November 2018, Gabriel Zucker - Weighting
“Zucker’s advanced compositional work is knotty, unpredictable, and utterly satisfying. Spinning with freshness and maturity, Weighting is put forward with a sterling avant-garde posture that reflects the artistry and commitment of the musicians involved.”
• → New York City Jazz Record, December 2018, Best of 2018: Best Debut Record
• → Phil Freeman, Stereogum, 21 December 2018, Runner-Up for Album of the Year List: Ugly Beauty: The Month In Jazz - December 2018
• → Mike Greenblatt, The Aquarian, 23 January 2019, Rant 'n' Roll: 2018 Honorable Jazz Mentions
“...a mighty effort — up amongst the best of last year’s jazz”
• → Phil Freeman, Downbeat, February 2019, Gabriel Zucker: Weighting
“The album’s eight tracks are combined into three suites, each surging and receding, slamming and roaring before descending into a keening wail from the horns or a solo piano passage... This is an album that refuses to distinguish between old and new, structure and freedom.”
• → Avant Music News, 16 December 2018, AMN Reviews: Gabriel Zucker - Weighting
“While Weighting is serious music, it also exhibits a sense of urgency and joy despite all of the polyphony. As a result, the album has no shortage of appeal. This one should be on everybody’s best of 2018 list.”
• → Selwyn Harris, Jazzwise, March 2019, New Releases
• → Joseph Neff, The Vinyl District, 15 November 2018, Graded on a Curve: New in Stores, November 2018, Part Three
• → George Harris, Jazz Weekly, 31 January 2019, Gabriel Zucker: Weighting
• → Ted Parkinson, The Whole Note, 26 February 2019, Weighting - Gabriel Zucker
• → Sébastien Hélary, Nextbop, 4 January 2019, Pianist Gabriel Zucker Releases Visuals for “the stones in my pockets” (Video Premiere)
• → Dee Dee McNeil, Musicalmemoirs, 29 November 2018, Musical Ingenuity: Fasten Your Seat Belt
• → Phil Freeman, New York City Jazz Record, December 2018, Weighting - Album Review
• → Jackson Sinnenberg, Capital Bop, 26 November 2018, When Has Something Ever Ended? Gabriel Zucker Writes Music Against Resolution
• → Bruce Gallanter, DMG Newsletter for Friday, November 9th, 2018
• → Avant Music News, 18 November 2018, AMN Picks of the Week: Josh Sinton / Christoph Irniger / Anji Cheung / Gabriel Zucker / Stop Motion Orchestra
• → Chris Spector, Midwest Record, 11/09/18
• → New York City Jazz Record, November 2018, Recommended Release
• → Leonid Auskern, Jazz Quad, 31 October 2018, Gabriel Zucker - Weighting
• → Jackson Sinnenberg, Capital Bop, 25 October 2018, Gabriel Zucker’s Weighting

Press for Spectrum Rzewski Festival 2018

• → David Wright, New York Classical Review, 24 December 2018, Top Ten Performances of 2018
• → David Wright, New York Classical Review, 7 November 2018, Composer’s arrows hit the target at Spectrum’s Rzewski Festival
“Five pianists participated in the event, instigated and hosted by Gabriel Zucker, who also gave the evening’s standout performance. On a night when technical proficiency and musical insight were in abundance, Zucker’s rendering of Rzewski’s Squares took things to the next level, creating the illusion of the music itself speaking, rather than a player interpreting a score.

This despite Rzewski’s often-gnarly writing for the instrument, which any pianist would deserve a medal just for wading through. The fistfuls of notes that Zucker flung across the keyboard in this 1978 suite were always driven by the musical impulse, and artfully phrased amid the pandemonium.”
• → Steve Smith, The New Yorker, November 2018, Rzewski Festival

Press for Evergreen (Canceled World)

• → Alex Henderson, New York City Jazz Record, October 2017, Evergreen (Canceled World) Review
• → Steve Greenlee, Jazz Times, 22 February 2017, The Top 50: Writers’ Ballots (#3 of 2016)
• → Carlo Wolff, Downbeat, April 2017, Mightier Than The Sword
★ ★ ★ ★ ½ “Pianist-composer Gabriel Zucker leads a definitively diverse ensemble through an ecologically resonant program of 12 movements. The result is a fascinating form of sonic installation.”
• → Dave Wayne, All About Jazz, 4 January 2017, The Delegation: Evergreen (Canceled World)
★ ★ ★ ★ “Evergreen (Canceled World) totally lives up to its larger-than-life sweep and scope.”
• → Raul da Gama, World Music Report, 31 October 2016, The Delegation: Evergreen (Canceled World) Review
“Here is a young man with a profound sense of tone and colour and how it can be wrought from diverse instrumentation to be affectingly ‘cantorial’, expressive and hugely symphonic too. Taking his time and spacing out the dramatic music over two discs Zucker sustains the thrill of experiencing its larger canvas.”
• → George W. Harris, Jazz Weekly, 12 January 2017, BIG SESSIONS: Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra: Basically Baker Vol 2, The Delegation: Evergreen (Canceled World)
• → Bird is the Worm, 12 November 2016, Recommended: The Delegation — Evergreen (Canceled World)
• → Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen, 25 October 2016, Pianist/composer Gabriel Zucker, on creating 'a more thorough and complete expression about the world'
• → Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery, Recommended Disc Picks for 2016.
• → Sylvannia Garutch, The Jazz Word, 14 November 2016, The Delegation — Evergreen (Canceled World).
• → Sea of Tranquility, 2 February 2017, The Delegation: Evergreen (Canceled World)
• → Jazz Speaks, 4 May 2014, Gabriel Zucker Speaks

Other

• → Lana Norris, I Care If You Listen, 14 December 2019, Spectrum Reopens at The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition
“With Henry Mermer on drums, Zucker mixed synth, piano, and solo vocals for cathartic expressions of joy, angst, and arrival.”
• → David Wright, New york Classical Review, 14 December 2019, A different Christmas concert with Zucker tackling Messiaen’s visionary “Vingt Regards”
“Messiaen, a devout Catholic, viewed the Incarnation, God made flesh, as the most disruptive event in human history. Pianist Gabriel Zucker, performing the enormous solo work at Spectrum in Brooklyn Friday night, made that abundantly clear, as galactic calm alternated with explosive energy, transporting the listener light-years away from Mary-and-Joseph, ox-and-ass domesticity... the composer’s endless ingenuity, sensuality and passion, vividly realized by Zucker, completely captured one’s attention. The piece’s two-hour duration hardly mattered. To borrow another Messiaen title, this was a performance ‘for the end of time.’”
• → Brad Cohan and George Grella, Brooklyn Rail, June 2019, Highly Selective Listings
“Over the last few years, the legendary ESP-Disk' label has staged a comeback with a bevy of disparate, forward-looking releases. Some of those freethinking musicians are coming together tonight to celebrate the ESP-Disk' Festival, including ... piano firebrand Gabriel Zucker.”
• → Steve Smith, The New Yorker, September 2019, Steinway D Arrival Marathon
• → Steve Smith, The New Yorker, April 2019, String Theories Festival
• → Juan Jesús García, BuscaMusica.es, 28 February 2018, Un renacentista del siglo XXI en el Magic
• → Matti Kinnunen, 25 August 2019, Carnegia Hallista Roihuvuoren HRH-baariin
• → Joe Barron, Liberated Dissonance, 20 February 2017, Ives Uncaged
“...the young powerhouses Gabriel Zucker and Erika Dohi...rise to the challenge with astonishing precision. The performance is seamless.”
• → American Composers Forum, 4 February 2015, Gabriel Zucker: Maximalism and Negative Space
• → Jazz Speaks, Freedom and Form: Gabriel Zucker Speaks
• → Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 26 November 2012, A Moment to Be Sentimental, but Not Mushy