Kilter

Kilter is significant as a title because it displays Mary Ellen's habit of insisting we remember what, if left to ourselves, we'd be quite happy to forget. She's moved on, compelled like the rest of us to negotiate a strange, often lovely land, in an oddly menacing time. What she writes are signposts in that land, or lanterns which led the way home one night. - Bill Morelock, NPR

In Parterre transformation works as an almost psychedelic fantasy. Childs juggles a kaleidoscopic assortment of musical colors that are presented as layer upon layer of energized pulsations. These colors later develop and mutate with a wonderfully rich and warm sense of expansion. Childs creates a world where we feel anything could happen--a truly universal world that's primordial in its understanding of humanity. In the work of Minneapolis composer Mary Ellen Childs, transformation is used to guide carefully and interpret the combined emotional and intellectual experience. - Bunita Marcus, Elle Magazine

An enveloping and entrancing audio quilt composed of organic reeds, sylvan accordion, timepiece xylophone, seductive polyrhythms, and somewhat histrionic wordless vocals. Parterre is an altogether surprising, accomplished, beautiful work that creates its own little universe. - Tom Surowicz, Twin Cities Reader