“Your piece “Reflection on a Tang Poem” is just lovely―a poetic and shapely masterpiece.  It is beautifully paced and proportioned, yet sounds quite spontaneous in its expression―This is so hard to achieve! I find the climax especially stirring, and brilliantly written for the piano―almost like Gershwin at his best  (I have always admired Gershwin’s dazzling piano writing).  Better yet, the piece actually DOES what your program notes describe―and how rare that is, too. Finally, it’s so nice to listen to a piece by a composer who allows himself to write beautiful and emotionally expressive music, counting the impressionists as well as Chinese folk music in his ancestry; most composers nowadays keep trying to be clever, or complicated, or aggressively dissonant.  But you’re a real poet.”

Elinor Armer

我向大家大力推荐“枫桥夜泊”这首优秀的钢琴作品！在同类型同题材的作品中，有了很大的突破！我向作者热烈的祝贺！西麟

I highly recommend the excellent piano work “Reflection on a Tang Poem.” It stands out marvelously for its novelty among the music compositions of the same genre on the subject. My wholehearted congratulations to the composer!

Wang Xilin

Renowned Chinese composer

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“Chinese composer Young’s “Reflections on a Tang Poem” is an interesting, atmospheric piece. While one might think of Debussy and Chopin, the pentatonic scale-based modes and the Tang dynasty poem point to a Chinese influence.”

American Record Guide

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“Now sit down at a piano at midnight. Hit the soft pedal, use your cat’s paws and push-out  enormous sustained chords with as many fingers as you can come up with.  Sooner or later you’ll begin to think you are Debussy. That’s the spirit of romance we find in Phil Young’s Reflection on a Tang Poem. The poem itself evokes a still harbor at midnight. Indeed, La cathedrale engloutie sprang to mind, even before I read the notes. A very evocative dreamscape. But like Schumann, it also contains swirling fistfuls of notes–the very psychic storms which lead to the notion of the romantic era itself.”

Steven Kruger

New York Arts

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“In my collaboration with pianist Clara Yang, premiering Phil Young’s “Nostalgia” a few years back and again at this concert, we keep discovering more depth and complex emotional intensity the composer has shared generously through his music. It is a piece of jewel dazzling with technical virtuosity. I enjoy playing it every time.” –  

Helen Z. Altenbach

Cellist of LA Opera Orchestra

San Francisco Classical Voice  

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  “Young’s lushly romantic score, in particular, is highly effective in giving the   work a kind of filmic grandeur that the choreography sometimes lacks…”                                                                                                 

                                 – San  Jose Mercury News                                                                                          

“CPAA resident composer Phil Young provided music that not only laid the platform upon which the dancers could emote, but could easily stand alone as an outstanding modern work.  It’s an Epic!”

 – Inside Bay Area

“Composer Phil Young ran with it, completing a basic score with Chinese flavor and Western form in one proverbial brush stroke.”

” – – – Silk Empress. Meijer pours herself into the gliding, purring, sensual, East-meets-West music of Phil Young (who was in the house this performance) as if it speaks to her on every level. “

– Metroactive

KTSF Chinese TV “Talk Tonight” (有話要說）June 2017 interview