The Globe and Mail
Robert Everett-Green
23rd November 2004
(...) Nicolas Gilbert's Idées fixes, réminiscences et résidus was a spacious, modular piece, full of wistful monody and percolating ensemble patterns that evoked the sound and swing of Broadway vamps from the fifties. Some sections recurred and reformed in ways that implied large-scale formal symmetries, as well as the everyday action of memory. This airy music was built on a 12-tone melody, yet Gilbert treated his serial method with a witty, promiscuous air. (...)
