PRESS

"The world premiere of Nate Leslie’s Open Your Eyes, Now is the Time was brought to us by the New Music Initiative at Mizzou, funded by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation. The curators were presented with work by a number of student composers and of them chose Leslie to write a piece for them to perform. The resulting commission had the urgency of youth, with as many frenetic crashes per capita as I have ever heard in a piece of classical music. The young composer compelled the string quartet to play with finale energy for the entire five minutes. Leslie told us this piece is about him becoming the person he wants to be, and it sounded like he was in a big hurry to get there."

​

-Chris King, The St. Louis American