At All Device:  David Holtzman Plays Piano Music by John McDonald
Released on Bridge Records 9528. March 2020.
“McDonald is close to pianist David Holzman and has written some of these works specifically for him. One is Three-Parter, which manages to squeeze its three sections, almost movements, into less than four minutes. It is a gentle and lovely piece. Another work written for Holzman is Digital Dance Fetish: An African Allegro, a score demanding great virtuosity and marked by obsessive repetition….A disc containing 17 short pieces, only one longer than four minutes, must provide a variety of mood, color, and tempo in order to hold the listener’s attention. McDonald’s music and Holzman’s sympathetic performances combine to do that.”
– Fanfare Magazine, April 30, 2020. Read full review.

Work and Life concert
Performed by John McDonald, piano; Julia Soojin Cavallaro, mezzo-soprano; Philipp Stäudlin, saxophone. Distler Performance Hall, Tufts University, Medford, MA, February 3, 2019.
Sevens, OR: Another Day In The Music Office, Op. 646was a lovely recognition of this [sensitivity to] down-to-earthness, but couched in a complex palette of colors that made one almost see the light streaming into that office. Punctuated references to the ordinary … peppered the composition that maintained its balance of atmospheric and punctuated sensibilities throughout.
Thoughts on Isaiah’s Work Life , is as well, both insistently energetic and infused by peaceful vistas. How well that contrast of the maniacal dance, almost Philip Glass-like in its parade of constancy, modulates into rolling hills of notes surrounded by the emerging light of the gradually appearing vistas.
P.S. For P.S., After R.P.S. (Night and Dreams) which evokes both the lovely Romantic undertones and the searchingly contemporary overtones that prevailed. One might spend time figuring out the semiotics of all of the references, but suffice it to say that the harmonic combinations of McDonald’s and Stäudlin’s playing and of Cavallaro’s singing gave an inspired and elevated conclusion to this delightful, poignantly playful, and fulfilling concert.
– Boston Arts Diary, February 3, 2019. Read full review.

Unreachable: for soprano saxophone
Performed by Philipp Stäudlin, Seully Hall, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Boston, April 2018.
“…unfolded as dichotomy of stasis that lasted as long as the human breath; its high energy activity developed in ABA ternary form.”
– Boston Musical Intelligencer, April 25, 2018. Read full review.

Before(four)hand(s): Preludes for Piano, Two Played
Performed by Edith Auner and Thomas Stumpf, Tufts University, April 10, 2016.
“…McDonald’s piece, which Stumpf described as a “mixture of humor with a little wistful, melancholy thrown in,” was played by Auner and Stumpf side-by-side on the same piano.”
– Tufts Daily, April 15, 2016. Read full review.

Airy: Music for Violin and Piano
Released on Bridge Records 9402. September 30, 2013.
“The intriguing, crisply performed new album, Airy: John McDonald Music for Violin and Piano is just out from Bridge Records with the composer at the keys along with Joanna Kurkowicz on violin. It’s a series of mainly short, wary, acerbic, sometimes atmospheric, sometimes incisive works written between 1985 and 2008. A handful of them are etudes. Minimalism is the usual but not always defining idiom here. Moments of virtual silence are pierced by anxiously leaping motives; subtle humor occasionally breaks the surface.”
– Lucid Culture, November 13, 2013. Read full review.

Gentle but Uneasy Dance Music
Performed by A Far Cry string ensemble, Jordan Hall, Boston, January 11, 2013.
“The work is simultaneously pensive yet affable, using spare orchestration to highlight miniature motives.”
– The Boston Musical Intelligencer, January 13, 2013. Read full review.

Reunion in Solos and Duets
Performed by Kenneth Radnovsky, saxophone, Marco Granados, flute, John McDonald Piano, Jordan Hall, February 21, 2011.
“Featuring palindromic inner solo movements, the set as a whole was mostly characterized by restrained, often meditative developments. As if being suddenly awakened from a trance, the fifth miniature, “Duet: Maestoso” allowed the flute and saxophone to dance excitedly around enticing and erratic rhythms, closing playfully with a satisfying quip for the premiere performance of a truly exceptional piece.”
– The Boston Musical Intelligencer, March 4, 2011. Read full review.

Stäudlin as Vogl: Preamble to a Winter Journey, and Winterreise for alto sax and piano
Performed by Philipp Stäudlin and John McDonald, Goethe Institute of Boston, February 8, 2009.
“Spare but never timid or understated, McDonald’s music evokes Schubert’s, sometimes melodically, often by rhythm and dynamics; but it also stands on its own as a sort of minimalist representation of the passions running through the original work.”
– The Boston Musical Intelligencer, February 11, 2009. Read full review.