He is a very gifted composer whose work shows continual
evolution, and I expect he will make a significant contribution to the
world of serious music. —Charles Wuorinen
...the musical equivalent of fractal geometry...like a Japanese stone
garden.
—Classical New Jersey
...brings to mind certain stunning images by the surrealist
painter Joan Miró... complex and restless... brightly coloured
and exotic, with a high energetic call. —Pan, The Magazine
of the British Flute Society
...a powerful, percussive score. —St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
Other premieres on the program proved more worthy,
particularly James Romig's unhurried, pointillistic Islands That Never
Were, which leads piano and vibraphone to a distant place of quiet rapture.
—The Baltimore Sun
...sparseness of movement...explosively jarring sections,
and very keen harmonies. —New Music Connoisseur
Each stage of [the dissertation's] structure, from
the analytically derived "premises," to the analytically motivated
"speculative" extensions, to the realization, the instantiations
in concrete compositions, is thoughtfully and thoroughly realized....
[Romig] has succeeded in conflating ideas and techniques into a coherent
construal.... I suspect—and hope—that this exceptional thesis
will be in demand within the knowing musical community, for there is
no other comparable document which presents understandingly such a range
of musical thought, both in and about music, in "theory," application,
and extension. —Milton Babbitt (review of Ph.D. dissertation.)
