1965
In his review "A Bracing Dash of New Music" for the Chicago Daily News, critic Donal Henahan (who later became the chief music critic for the New York Times) evaluated a performance by Max Neuhaus during his tenure with the University of Chicago's Contemporary Chamber Players.
Henahan highlights Neuhaus as a standout member of the ensemble, describing him as a "percussion specialist" whose technical precision provided the "bracing" quality mentioned in the title.
The concert took place during a period of intense experimentation at the university, led by Ralph Shapey. Henahan noted how Neuhaus managed to find musical coherence within scores that relied heavily on aleatoric (chance) elements and non-traditional notation.
Bridging Europe and America: Henahan's review captures Neuhaus at the exact moment he was synthesizing the rigorous European serialism of Stockhausen with the American experimentalism of John Cage, a fusion that would define his final years as a performer.