ALARIC JANS
“And the music! I tell you, Alaric (Rokko) Jans is one of my heroes. The music was so fitting, so lyrical, rich, gorgeous, melodic...”
4/23/2009
David Bevington, (one of the world’s foremost Shakespearean scholars); review of Twelfth Night at Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST)
“Shakespeare’s game of amorous deceptions was made immensely more enjoyable by the atmosphere created by Mr. Jans’ melodious scoring. His rich and and wondrous compositions came together in what is one of his most romantic scores ever and was the story’s perfect commentary”
10/6/2005
Citation for After Dark Award
For The Merry Wives of Windsor at CST
“Alaric brings a great humanity to each show. There is a broad versatility in his music, and he knows how to use it to tell a story....There is a lack of ego here that is quite unusual in the theater and makes every problem and change an easy adventure.”
10/13/2005
Barbara Gaines, quoted by Mary Houlihan in Chicago Sun-Times feature story
“..the piece is essentially conceived like a pleasant musical drive through marital games amid the fall colors, replete with some lovely original music from Alaric Jans, who is in especially tuneful form here.”
9/13/2004
Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune review of The Merry Wives Of Windsor at CST
“The results are shiny and impressive... The production concludes with a lovely aerial ballet; Alaric Jans’ music offers lulling opportunities for some gorgeous six-part vocal harmony.”
4/9/2002
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune review of The Tempest at CST
‘If music be the food of love, then composer Alaric Jans has come up with the string-quartet equivalent of tea-cakes—mighty nice ones—for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s “Love’s Labor’s Lost….Director Barbara Gaines’ entertaining production of the early Shakespeare comedy is set in a Maxfield Parrish universe of supernaturally bright colors, circa 1913. Played by an onstage quartet, Jans’ introductory ditty is just right: sweet and swift, it ushers us into the lakeside academy retreat of the King of Navarre…And I’ll be surprised if composer Jans’s signature music doesn’t end up as a public radio theme song someday.”
9/16/2002
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune review of Love’s Labor’s Lost at CST
“…it’s impossible to overpraise the look of this gorgeous production. If Phillippi’s petal-laden set seems too beautiful to take down, equal credit goes to Robert Perry’s lighting for making the most of every color, Virgil Johnson’s lyrical costumes for perfectly capturing these fleeting fashions, and Alaric Jans’ score for setting it all to such sweet song.”
9/16/2002
Lawrence Bommer, Chicago Free Press review of Love’s Labor’s Lost at the CST
“The very early Shakespeare comedies surely are not as rich in poetry as his later works, but as Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s new production proves once again, they can—given the right cast, a clever director and a bright production concept—be turned into wonderful musical comedies. The director [Penny Metropulos]..kept it singing and dancing to ragtime music (newly composed by Alaric Jans and played by a trio at one side of the thrust stage)….James Harms, as the gallant old gent, Eglamour, uses his song-and-dance skills to deliver some of Jans’ loveliest tunes.
9/19/2000
Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune review of The Two Gentlemen of Verona at CST
“She uses the clown Lavache as a kind of master of ceremonies, introducing and punctuating the story with a bittersweet song of romance. With Alaric Jans’ music (his best yet for CST) and with the strong voice and wistful jollity of Ronald Keaton as Lavache, it is a device that beautifully augments the play’s air of ambivalent romance.”
5/1/2000
Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune review of All’s Well That Ends Well at the CST
“Ronald Keaton plays delightfully with many sexual double entendres as the lusty clown Lavatch, and weaves through the action singing Alaric Jans’s haunting songs, with lyrics from several of Shakespeare’s sonnets.”
5/1/2000
Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times review of All’s Well That Ends Well at CST
“…Mamet tapped him to compose the score for his film adaptation of Terence Rattigans’s The Winslow Boy, about a young boy whose father risks everything to contest his son’s expulsion from the royal naval academy. The score, perhaps Jans’ finest work to date, is evocative of England in 1906—lush, melancholic, and somewhat formal in composition.”
6/2000
Craig Keller, feature story “Mamet’s Maestro” in Chicago Social (Magazine)
