Bernard Holland Review of Underhill Piano Trio #1 performed by the Gramercy Trio in Merkin Concert Hall, published in the N.Y. Times Feb 19, 2007:
There was a Piano Trio new to most of us by Nicholas Underhill. Its basic modesty and good manners were underlined by the music that came before it on the program: Brahms’s muscular, plus-size Trio in C (Op. 87). In the first of Mr. Underhill’s two movements, little ripples of phrase gather in speed and density and are set next to smoother melodic lines.
The music ends with theme and variations: first Schumanesque lyricism, a busy fugue and then some high-energy, off-kilter demonstrativeness before the piece trails off into the low-key gentility that seems to mark its true personality.
Sharan Levanthal was the violinist and Jonathan Miller the cellist. All three teach in Boston area, where Mr. Underhill also has much of his background. They are musicians on a high level.
Mike Telin, Cleveland Classical Review of The No Exit New Music Ensemble Peformance at Spaces on April 8, 2016:
The program, titled Music, Mind, Mirth, and Mayhem , opened with the premiere of Six Pièces à la Satie . Although each work lasted no longer than three and a half minutes, pianist Nicholas Underhill’s astute ordering of the six miniatures created the trajectory
of a single unified composition. Geoffrey Burleson’s melodic Lettres Dansantes: Hommage à E. Satie is an attractive work with hints of jazz sprinkled in. Arpeggios from the top to the bottom of the keyboard dominated Timothy Beyer’s Forests: real and imagined , until the piece ended with a nod to Satie’s Gnossienne No. 3 . James Praznik highlighted Satie’s penchant for repetition in his Spiritualités Simultané . Robert Honstein only makes use of the “white” keys in his Chant Extatique, playing on Satie’s assertion that he only ate white food.
David Rakowski’s Gnöpélledie is an inventive three minute set of variations, with a hint of ragtime. Kevin Eppich’s impressionistic Pensées Têtues brought the set to a fitting conclusion with its cadenzalike ending. Nicholas Underhill, as always, played with
sensitivity and technical agility.
Review of No Exit performance at Space Gallery, 10/19/2012:
Spaces is a pleasant place to hear music. It has a welcoming feel and surprisingly warm and intimate acoustics. It also gives audiences a chance to be close to the music making. The capacity crowd was first treated to a superb performance of Bela Bartók’s Out of Doors (1926). Performing this programmatic five movement work is demanding on a performer. It is technically challenging and requires physical endurance from the player, and pianist Nichoals Underhill accepted the challenge with aplomb. Establishing that Wow! factor from the start, Underhill achieved crisp and clear articulations that provided the needed percussive quality for With Drums and Pipes, the work’s opening movement. He kept the left hand line moving steadily during the Barcarolla and tossed off the final Chase with ease. Underhill clearly has a deep understanding of this complicated work and his performance sounded second-nature, even during the most brutal passages.
Akron Beacon Journal 4/14/03
Review of New American Arts Festival:
Andrew Rindfleisch’s Two Pieces for Violin and Piano fared well in the hands of Daniella Strasfogel and Nick Underhill. The melancholy slow movement made me forget to take notes, it carried me along so effortlessly.”
Review in records International of albumn entitled “Nicholas Underhill”:
NICHOLAS UNDERHILL (b.1953): Piano Concerto, Piano Sonata, Passacaglia.
The current exhibition at the Whitney in New York is all about the American Century in the fine arts.
Someone should assemble something along the same lines in music, because a very convincing case could be made that this has been America’s century in music, too. Underhill would certainly warrant a place in such an exposition; here we have another highly individual composer, sufficiently post-everything that it doesn’t really matter (though he uses elements of serialism, minimalism and a very definite tonality as aspects of his vocabulary with complete ease and naturalness). The “American-ness” of the music consists of some allusions to jazz and some textures and rhythms that will remind some of Bernstein. Underhill is certainly not afraid of traditional forms – sonata form and ostinato-driven structures both have their place here – but within them he has composed music of great individuality and expressive force.
Nicholas Underhill (piano), Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra; Vladimír Válek. MMC 2077 (US.A.) 01B094