“Certainly this piece is imposing, with its granitic sounds suggesting huge land-forms and imagined spaces… Above all, this is music which comes across as honest, compassionate, dignified and accessible… Highly recommended.” [David Bollard, Music Forum, Summer 2011]

“Once Upon a Time … was written in Banff, Canada during one of four residencies he has spent there. Northern climes suit Schultz’s temperament… The music is full of colourful imagination evoking unspecified characters and episodes from folk tales and the imagination of childhood. The scenes are as rich as the colourful orchestration. Gawky grotesques, lissom princesses, black horrors and verdant secret valleys float into view… The music is tonal, open textured, miraculously well orchestrated and rife with solos and chamber dialogue. Effects are shimmeringly vivid and full of awe… this [is] often intimately confiding music.” [Rob Barnett, Music Web International, October 2011]

“Once Upon a Time … is Schultz’s reaction to the wonder of musical storytelling through the magical realm of the orchestra. The original was composed for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra with triple winds but for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra he has revised it down to double winds for the smaller orchestra.”  [Elaine Siversen, Fine Music, July 2012]

“Once upon a time has many interesting textures and layers to it, again an image laden piece…I quite like the way in which Schultz goes down to basics and proceeds from simple ideas, yet at the same time his music isn’t exactly lacking in richness, fine detail or complexity either. One thing I notice is his ability to pare things down so that you get a sense of the intimacy of chamber music, although these are works for large orchestra (the percussion section in Once upon a time sounds like it must be pretty big).” [Sid James, “Andrew Schultz,” Talk Classical, 27 September 2014.]

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