To listen to a warm and engaging podcast interview with cellist Michael Ronstadt recounting his career, how he was influenced by his aunt Linda, and his new CD featuring my cello music, go to this website.:

https://kbaq.org/content/michael-g-ronstadt-continues-his-familys-musical-legacy-new-classical-cello-album

Producing and distributing recordings of my music is both fun and tedious, glorious and discouraging. The process comes with baggage, notably, reviews.

Some are positive, some are negative, some are funny.

Funny? One critic wrote, “I don’t know how to describe the music of Rick Sowash except to say that if Grandma Moses had been a composer, this is what her music would sound like.”

That still makes me laugh.

Some are hurtful. One reviewer wrote that my CD titled “Portals,” which featured my Concerto for Clarinet & Orchestra, would be more accurately titled if the letters of “Portals” were re-arranged to spell “R - A - T - S - L - O - P.”

“Rat slop?” Really?

That concerto is my best orchestral work. But that critic hated it and his review was published in a prominent journal of reviews for new recordings.

When I get a stinker of a review, ”I say to myself, “Well, this guy wrote a review and I wrote a concerto. Which is the more impressive achievement?”

My new CD, “Ronstadt plays Sowash, Vol. 1,” is garnering reviews. I want to share with you one that made me smile.

(Disclaimer: The reviewer, Pat Marriott, Music Director at WHQR Public Media in Wilmington NC has been a close friend for 15 years. He edited my most recent book, “How Music Means.” He contributed so many good ideas about the Jazz and Blues sections that he virtually wrote those parts of the book.)

“I was introduced to Rick Sowash's music by a mutual musician-friend a quarter-century ago. For all those years it has been a joy to admire the growth of Rick's art, while he has faithfully adhered to his core musical values of honesty and accessibility. Rick is a lifelong Ohioan, and he unabashedly writes music of his place. He has successfully captured the small-c conservative, straightforward friendliness of his native state, while writing some remarkably adventurous, interesting and downright fun music.

Accessibility is the key word here. Don't get me wrong - there is great sophistication and challenge in this music, and it both demands and increasingly rewards repeated hearings. But Rick writes not for academicians or even for fellow musicians, but for music-loving listeners who come to his music mostly to enjoy. Writing principally for ensembles of his own close friends, most of Rick's nearly two dozen published CDs are chamber recitals, with all the intimacy, friendship and musical fun inherent in that genre. It is music to be played and listened to, pure and simple.

The latest, Ronstadt Plays Sowash, is a fine case in point. Sensitive and athletic cellist Michael G. Ronstadt takes on technically challenging solo pieces, and also joins ensembles in a baker's dozen short works that are clearly meant to played and heard by friends. Ranging from the surprisingly sonorous "Majesty" for cello and horn, to the whimsical "A Pirate's Christmas" (where Yo-Ho-Ho meets Ho-Ho-Ho), Rick and Michael achieve 75 minutes of variety and interest that will reward not only cellists, but anyone who enjoys musical art, not for art's sake, but for people's sake.”

Shucks. (Me again.) Let’s listen to a track from this new album. To hear the “surprisingly sonorous” “Majesty for French horn and Cello” performed by Doug Jones and Michael Ronstadt, click on the link above. There's also a link to a PDF of the score.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Nov. 30, 2025