Reviews
“O Sing Merrily SAB/keyboard. We seldom get an A+SAB anthem; usually they're watered-down, four-part arrangements intended for amateur groups with enough men. Well, this is one merry piece by a fine composer, and the fourth part will never be missed - especially in the beginning imitation where the alto's second entrance gives the impression of a fourth part. The entire five and one-half pages repeats with a coda, so the choir even gets a second chance!”
Rollin Smith in The American Organist, July 2009.
“Surely the shining star of the night was Nick Fairbank with his Kingsfold Variations. His playing was absolutely brilliant, demonstrating the fine tonal resources of the Cathedral's Wolff organ. This was a joy to hear, and all the more so as it was our local composer who wrote this delightful work.”
Fran Pollet in Pro Organo, May 2009.
“Gaudeamus ... would make a fine postlude to a major liturgical celebration.”
“Song of Ruth ... is carefully crafted in contrasting textures and ranges to bring out a wide variety of tone colours. This music displays Fairbank's fluency in twentieth-century French compositional and improvisational styles.”
“Variations on Kingsfold ... displays economy of material, directness of expression, and a wide contrast of affective moods, very often controlled through well thought-out textural contrasts ...”
William Renwick in Organ Canada, vol.16 no.3 (2003).
“Victoria composer Nicholas Fairbank's recent piano works prove him to be a composer worth studying. His charming Vancouver Island Suite ... shows that he knows his forms and has a sense of fun. Toccata is a work to be reckoned with and requires an advanced technique as well as good interpretive skills. Ten Preludes contains an interesting mix of lush, very tonal and accessible music to technically and interpretively challenging 12-tone pieces.”
Ernst Schneider in the Provincial Newsletter of the B.C. Registered Music Teachers' Association, Spring 2002.
“Fairbank's writing is... consistently elegant, and devoted to beauty as a vehicle for text... Deserving special mention is his elaborate setting of If ye love Me, whose repetition of short text fragments breaks violently with the simple poise of Tallis' beloved setting, but nonetheless conveys the warm sentiment of the Johannian text of Jesus to the disciples at Pentecost.”
Christopher Dawes in Organ Canada, Sept. 2006.
"Suite No.2 ... is neo-classical, bearing a lot of resemblance to dance and stylistic features of the baroque suite but feeling free to depart from them as well, particularly in the area of tonality. I think these pieces would appeal to an advanced student who has some knowledge of form, suite movements and key structure.... The composer uses rhythm most effectively. In the Prelude there are several insertions of a bar of 2/4 time which acts as a connecting link. The Courante features a quirky little recurring hemiola. The Sarabande has an interesting triplet pattern which is shared between two voices and the Jig, which begins simply, builds through subtly altered chromatic chords to quite a thick texture of seven-note chords, ending with a chordal hemiola before closing on slow tonic seventh chords."
Joyce Janzen in the Provincial Newsletter of the B.C. Registered Music Teachers' Association, Fall 2007.