(recording) “Poems, for trumpet and piano, serves up five melodically inspired pieces that, in their simple eloquence, bring the best of the Beatles to mind. Chris Gekker has made himself known over the years as a superb trumpeter who is able to produce meltingly flute-like tones at one extreme, and to bring the house down at the other. Here he is at one with the composer as pianist. And so it goes for the rest of this offering. Organist Richard Bunbury is fully attuned to the simple poetry of the Liturgical Suite; Chris Gekker once again does himself proud in the Four Lyrics for trumpet and piano, as does the Cambridge Brass Ensemble with Harrylyn Huff at the organ in Unchanging Love.

“The sound on this offering is up to conveying its essences. Some of my friends in the music business will undoubtedly dismiss this music on the grounds that it sounds too good to be good. I hereby lodge my dissenting opinion.”—Fanfare, May-June ’09 William Zagorski