People' s Voices About the Music:
"One of the most delightful numbers on the CD "BuJazzO Volume 2" of the German Youth Jazz Orchestra is "Ancient Song", composed by Thorsten Wollmann. This beautifully haunting melody is played (by Claudio Puntin) on a Taragot. ...On this remarkable recording the Taragot sweeps and soars, strong, commanding, plaintive, and beautifully in tune at all times. Heavenly music indeed." Ron Simmons, www.JazzProfessional.com
"Die Komposition (Jupiter's Monde, Auftragswerk der Blasorchesterdirigentenklasse der Musikhochschule Basel) ist äusserst gekonnt gemacht und wirkungsvoll,..." Felix Hauswirth, Schweizer Dirigent und Lektor des Ruh Musikverlags
"I congratulate you on winning this prize (Phillip Neill Memorial Prize in Music 2002 of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand). The panel (of which I was one) really enjoyed your piece (composition "Fishes & Birds")". Peter Adams, composer and lecturer in music, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
"Diese Musik (CD CYCLES) hat mich sehr bewegt. Es ist nicht nur aufgenommene Musik, sondern sie drückt für mich die Wiedersprüchlichkeit der Welt aus. Die Klangfarben in den Improvisationen haben gerade in ihrer Sanftheit eine starke subtile Energie..." Prof. Jiggs Whigham, American Jazz Trombonist and Conductor
"Thank you very much for the CD of your concert (Colours of Siam). It is wonderful." Martha Butt, Vice President, Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
"Thorsten Wollmann hat mit Cycles ein kleines Meisterwerk abgeliefert. Ruhigen, gleichsam schwebenden Jazz, der das Ohr umschmeichelt..." Achim Zepp, Schwäbische Zeitung
"Wishing you the best and I must tell you that I enjoyed very much your concert and listening to your CD (Colours of Siam) daily." Egasith Chotpakditrakul, organizer of the International Music & Dance Festival, Bangkok, Thailand
"Ich habe mir inzwischen Deine "Colours of Siam" - CD besorgt und bin absolut begeistert von der wunderschönen Musik. ... Ich hab' die CD schon vielen Kollegen weiterempfohlen." Reiner Kugele, Fagottist Rundfunkblasorchester Leipzig, Deutschland
"It is wonderfully conceived music ("Concerto for Symphonic Band", based on paintings of Paul Klee), full of mystery and delicately colors, just like the art originals themselves. It is fairly unique wind music that does not display the expected wind-and-percussion pyrotechniques and four-rhythms. Your Concerto rewards close listening in a genre that so demands little of its audiences. The piece is a major entry in the Klee-music canon, and I am so glad to have it." Stephen Ellis, American author of a book about Paul Klee's influences on composers
"I was fascinated to read about your composition "Concerto for Symphonic Band" after Klee pictures. Congratulations on a unique work which will add a great deal to my book." Gary Evans, American Author of "Music Inspired by Art: A Guide to Recordings (Scarecrow Press)"
"I received "The Characteristics of Water" and ""Encuentros". They are especially fine pieces. I truly enjoy the tangos and the title composition on "Characteristics" is magnificent and fascinating. They have a distinct voice... It's truly lovely music." Jon J Muth, American Painter
"Conductor Hamish McKeich set things going with Auckland-based Thorsten Wollmann's warmly evocative "Morning Chant of a Kokako", a good choice with which to begin the sessions, as it seemed to appropriately encapsulate a re-awakening of orchestral sonorities and energies, along with realising the music's own specific and potent ambient depiction of an environment whose beauty and fragility our world can ill afford to lose.... It was a sound which would have stirred orchestra aficionado's blood -the strains of Thorsten Wollmann's evocative, atmospheric "Morning Chant of a Kokako" sounding and resounding through the warm and spacious ambiences of the Wellington Town Hall, ... Things began appropriately enough with an awakening, ... , a poetic and atmospheric evocation of a world presided over by one of the country's rarest and most threatened species of bird. The piece's opening had a Sibelius-like austerity, strings eerily filtering their sostenuto lines through the stillness with ever-growing intensity, as winds and percussion prepared the way for the Kokako's distinctive, gulping-like song. Warmer lyrical lines then engendered a kind of sunrise aspect which enabled the music to burst out of its orchestral chrysalis and flood the resonances with the colours of a new day. Set against these idyllic depictions of nature in harmony with itself were more forbidding passages in the music, dark-browed brass-led upheavals which suggested something of the rugged and isolated nature of the terrain, and evoked an ambience in which the birdsong seemed to be echoing its own mixture of confidence and disquiet regarding its place in the shape of things to come. One could speculate regarding the nature of the music's overall message -as much a political as a naturalistic and environmental statement, perhaps? Whatever its purpose, there was no denying the piece's power to evoke a world whose natural beauty and fragility we can ill afford to take for granted. And there seemed no reason why such an approachable, listener-friendly piece could not be readily scheduled in the orchestra's concert programs." Peter Mechen, music critic (Mechen's NZ Music Page, www.paradise.net.nz ), from an article about the composers readings of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in January 2003, Wellington , New Zealand