critics comments

The Critics Rave

"When they make a Broadway musical about you, they are going to call it 'Song of New Jersey.'
  --- Victor Bloom

"I think this piece you should maybe call 'Concerto Drastico.'
  --- Jan Radzinski

"Is that 'Sickle' or 'Sitchel'?"
  --- Jacob Druckman

"A canny deconstruction... disturbingly alluring."
  --- The Washington Post on Francesca da Bimini

"I love it! I'm going to play it until they come and take me away."
  --- Tom Allen, "Music and Company (CBC Radio), on "The Tsar's Clock"

"Madrigali Suburbani... was delightful and in spots quite beautiful."
 --- Courtney Cauble, New Haven Register

"We had a lot of fun doing your piece and the audience feedback was excellent! People loved it."
 --- Becky Bower (tromobonist, Pittsburgh Symphony) on the First Trombone Quartet

"Sichel's orchestration was so fitting that it was difficult to imagine the piece in its original piano solo form."
 --- Westfield [NJ] Leader on John Sichel's orchestrations of Three Preludes by Anthony Louis Scarmolin