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As many as three world premieres and three personally attending composers marked the special event. [...] The last section of the concert was dedicated to the world premieres of Robert Paterson’s 'A Dream Within A Dream' (a commission work for the Festival European Church Music) and 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' as well as Giselle Wyers’ 'The Invitation'.
July 30, 2011, Gmünder Tagespost, Hansjörg Sattler

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When Matt started talking about the time when he was young, it put a smile on everyone’s face, because the artist has never lost his 'Storm and Stress' energy; a fact underlined authentically and with tongue-in-check humor by the gospel encores of the concert in the church of St. Franziskus (St. Francis) testified authentically.
It became immediately clear that the seven conducting participants of the eleven class participants had not been forced to do anything. Matt’s respectable credo: support the personality and the emotional competency for mediation of his master students. ... There was only a gradual difference between the young conductors: Markus Mack (Freiburg), Ulrike Kestler (Wunstorf), Claudia Jennings (Sao Paolo), Daniel Arnold (Beselin), Martin Meyer (Cologne), Stefan Kaltenböck (Brixen) and Elizabeth Kühn (Switzerland).
Dr. Giselle Wyers (* 1969) directed 'The Invitation' (a commission work by the executing Chamber Choir of Europe) herself, while choirmaster Nicol Matt demonstrated – coherently for audience and class participants - what singing means in regards of criteria. Just how many times have voices been forced into a corset because of intentional arbitrariness or, epigonally, common hypothesis? In the church of St. Francis, however, people were allowed to listen to original and unabridged works - an uplifting experience! [...] Following 100 minutes of continuous singing, the professional singers had to give in to the applauding audience by performing the two Gospels as encores that gave the popular show-man Matt his reputation as a spirited artist - completely free of any pretense but simply spontaneous and natural.
The course of the program demonstrated both the vivacity and the quality of American choral compositions that are, unfortunately, largely unknown here. This is also due to the fact that in our country, the continually working choirs have very little new blood in their ranks, whereas in the U.S., choir singing ranks second (after sports). In the U.S., this link is a vivid source for quantity and quality of contemporary choral compositions. … Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein; thus, many of our contemporaries have hardly ever heard of Eric Whitacre (* 1970), Moden Lauridsen (* 1943), Bob Chilcott (* 1955), Giselle Wyers (* 1969), Ola Gjeilo (* 1978), or Robert Paterson (* 1970). In so far, it is Matt’s accomplishment having introduced us to these renowned masters.
All compositions fulfilled the criteria to sound in homogenous arcs as well as in clusters or dissonances that, however, never caused a flinch. This was increased by the capacity of polyphony, that was in part soloist or accompanied by piano. Such originality clearly calls for an individual mentioning of each work and directors’ accomplishment; however, this would go beyond the scope of any report
July 30, 2011, Rems-Zeitung (ry)

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