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[The Gonzales Cantata] is honestly, probably the coolest thing you've ever seen on this show. I know. I'm totally freaking out about it ... I spent all day obsessing about this, and watching clips of it online, and listening to the music, and I have to tell you, in my opinion, it is both great and kind of moving ... this is so cool, I could not contain myself.
— Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show
"Fully half the concert was devoted to a new cantata by Melissa Dunphy (b. 1980) based on the prose and poetry of immigrant Americans, Marlene Rangel, Javier Zamora, Janine Joseph and Julia Montejo, all undocumented and brought to the United States as children. All are Dreamers. All are stateless. Whatever our political views on the subject, this is an issue that screams for a resolution. This concert was a plea for understanding."
— KC Arts Beat
"[Melissa] Dunphy’s works are always among the emotional and musical high points of Resonance’s concerts, and this two-movement composition was one of the triggers [Resonance Artistic Director Katherine] FitzGibbon warned us about."
— Oregon Arts Watch
"Melissa Dunphy’s subtle sound design greatly enhances the production."
— WHYY
"It’s very inspiring and powerful, and it gives us an opportunity to share the stories of these five people,” [Matthew] Creek said. “It’s an opportunity to bring awareness and inspire hope that this country is a home for everyone and that immigrants are welcome.”
— Indiana Daily Student
"[Melissa Dunphy's] work had life and energy and feisty passion, and I wanted to program it all! Besides being an award-winning composer, Melissa herself is an amazing soul, and is the embodiment of the creative artist I want my students to know exists as a role model.
— Choral Net
Dunphy’s music flowed gracefully from sorrow to joy to terror, hints of the U.S. national anthem (that iconic descending trumpet call) turning sour and grief-stricken. Whenever the music was not itself outright provocative, it was transparent to let the text’s poignancy come through and do the challenging.
SLCC composer-in-residence Melissa Dunphy concluded her term with this concert and the world premiere of “Suite Remembrance.” [...] The result is engaging, ranging from the melancholy to the sprightly
— St Louis Post-Dispatch
[Hervararkvida]’s stunning instrumentation gives voice to a journey unlike any other. The mezzo-soprano sings the gender-bending role of Hervor/Hervarth, accompanied by a Hardanger fiddle-style violin part and a harp part that extends the instrument from sounds reminiscent of a bardic lyre to frightening spectral noises created by all manner of extended technique...
— WOSU Public Media
Though only around five minutes in length, Scallops and Bollocks for Tea from Australian Melissa Dunphy was the most fascinating piece on the program. It combines musical history, virtuosic writing for the violin soloist (Alex Granger), and aspects of video game lore.
— San Francisco Classical Voice
"It's heartbreaking and infuriating and frustrating to me as an Australian who feels like there has to be an easier answer."
— The Australian
The score by Dunphy requires the soprano to perform across a very wide range, and she does so with aplomb. The concept might seem a bit unusual, but it succeeds, and it manages to carry some emotional weight as well.
— Broadway World
...the loudest and longest applause of the afternoon went to Britten’s atmospheric, harmonically rich and technically interesting “Advance, Democracy” and Melissa Dunphy’s setting of, of all things, public testimony given by Philip Spooner before the state of Maine in 2009 regarding the Marriage Equality Bill.
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“[What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?] is an extraordinarily powerful piece,” said Saint Louis Chamber Chorus Artistic Director Philip Barnes. “I think it is way up there in the traditions of Copland or Roy Harris.”
— KWMU St. Louis Public Radio
[Composer-in-residence Melissa Dunphy's] “The Day of Resurrection” is written for double choir, a Chamber Chorus specialty, with liturgical echoes. Written mostly in 7/8 time, the music has an urgency that reflects the triumphal theme of the words. The new piece is a winner, and the choir gave it a superb performance.
“I admire her writing,” Barnes says of Dunphy. “I think she has a very original mind. She’s an exuberant personality, but she’s very disciplined, and she writes exceedingly clearly.”
Melissa Dunphy's O Oriens (O Morning Star) offered no gimmicks - just a model of sincerity, beautiful harmonic changes, and a great sensitivity to pitches and phrases that fall naturally on the human voice.
— Philadelphia Inquirer
The new composer-in-residence, Melissa Dunphy, contributed a new song, “Alpha and Omega.” For two choirs, it effectively juxtaposes texts from “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and the Book of Revelation, in a solidly written piece of choral writing.
“I perform [What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?] because I think first and foremost it’s a wonderful piece of music,” Barnes said. “And I was very gratified that people of persuasions, of different points of view on the argument, came together and said, ‘this is worth doing, this piece, because its musical value is so high.’”
Revolution Shakespeare's lively, tuneful – and free – production of Shakespeare's early comedy brims with romance, enthusiasm, and cleverness [...] Melissa Dunphy's pop compositions transform monologues into love songs, arguments into duets – and, yes, we're invited to sing along at times.
— Philadelphia CityPaper
Directed by Samantha Reading, with an original score composed by Melissa Dunphy and performed by the multi-talented seventeen-person ensemble, this hilarious reinvention successfully delivers all of the Bard’s clever verse and humorous plot points to a country-rock beat.
— Phindie
[Dunphy's] “Together” (the words are taken from the Acts of the Apostles, 2:44-46) is a beautiful piece with fascinating complexity. Starting next fall, Barnes announced, Dunphy will be the choir’s composer-in-residence, with a commission for the first concert in the SLCC’s 60th season.
As the audience entered and surrounded the flat, nearly bare stage on three sides, Dunphy sat—sometimes straight up, sometimes slumped—on an upholstered chair in front of a gold-gilt mirror, playing a black viola...
— Shakespeare Bulletin
Melissa Dunphy as Puck embodies pure mischievous glee with an engaging vitality (and her own theme music).
— Play Shakespeare
Melissa Dunphy is so gloriously gleeful that Puck’s actions as the engine of the plot end up making sense, which in all the madness of this play is quite the achievement.
Melissa Dunphy makes the most striking impression as Puck, as she wildly careens across the production in a state of frenzy, lithely scaling the floor-to-catwalk ribbons that flank the stage.
— Geekadelphia
Philadelphia, PA melissa@mormolyke.com 717-214-6121
