Gary Lloyd Noland – AMERICAN COMPOSER, MUSICOLOGIST & WRITER

(…) The Romanian born Marius Herea is a composer who writes within an unabashedly romantic idiom. His harmonic palette is lush and his sense of form unerring, both of which are exceedingly rare attributes to be found amongst works of composers in an age that tends to navel-gaze and deconstruct before it gains the capacity to think with clarity and “construct” and which almost invariably does its utmost to demoralize and disparage the integrity (read: solidity) of exquisitely crafted musical forms and structures.(…)
One inevitably encounters opposing schools of thought as to what music will prevail over time. This author has been around long enough to have witnessed a consistent historical pattern that the music which is often touted as “new and innovative” (read: superficially fashionable), notwithstanding its having been clumsily crafted, is usually all but forgotten after a generation or two once the initial excitement has worn off, whilst music that is exquisitely constructed to ensure its durability—as, for instance, the music of composers such as J.S. Bach, Brahms, and Richard Strauss (all of whom were considered old-fashioned in their time)—tends to find its way into the musical canon by virtue of qualitative features evidenced by superb and impeccable craftsmanship, regardless of whether or not it is (or was) considered “ground-breaking” by barbarically trenchant and outspoken critics.
The irony of encountering a composer such as Marius Herea in an age such as ours—who is alive and well and operating at full speed—is that, whilst many of his contemporaries are inevitably (almost like clockwork) going to do their utmost to conceal the fact that they are envious of his skills and accomplishments and accordingly do everything in their power to denigrate the integrity thereof and, perhaps, in a more subtle way, affix all but meaningless labels upon his accomplishments so as to pigeonhole his music for the purpose of consigning it to oblivion, he nevertheless distinguishes himself as one of those very few brave and unconventional mavericks amongst his fellow travelers who is so deeply passionate about what he writes—and damned good at it into the bargain!—that all the fire within him translates outwardly into the intensely passionate interpretations of his compositions that he receives from zealous champions of his music, namely: those performers who take upon themselves the honored task of giving his music an elevated platform through rousing renditions thereof (which are admirable accomplishments in and of themselves).
Composer Marius Herea, whose music is by no means “trendy” but beautifully written, belongs amongst that small and elite group of composers who create durable music that is lovingly conceived to withstand the test of time. He belongs to the time-honored tradition kept up by a rare breed of composers that includes such luminaries as Rachmaninoff, Sibelius…(…)

By Gary Lloyd Noland, January 2nd, 2021