"...Far more amusing, however, was Funny Napkins, a mini-opera by Wade, whose libretto and title came from Heidi Moss’ two daughters, Ava and Hana. These kids were four and six at the time Wade conceived this composition. The Moss sopranos staged the whole thing in a mini-nursery, imitating the two children as they engaged in their earliest exercises in language games. The score then abruptly shifts from the ridiculous to the sublime by setting the “Letter Duet” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. The staging turned this into a reading lesson with Ann as the “Susanna child” dutifully repeating the words read to her by Heidi’s “Countess child,” making for one of the most engaging accounts of this duo I have yet encountered."
~ Stephen Smoliar, SF Examiner, 8/27/12
"...The piece de resistance was the final poem, “Recuerdo,” [Liam Wade, 4 Poems of Edna Millay for Soprano and String Quartet] with Moss at first accompanied only by the soulful Angela Choong on viola, then the other players entering stunningly in stages, later giving way to a lovely a cappella section for Moss, and finally springing a hilarious vocal count-off by violinist [Isaac] Allen. Wade’s luscious voicings brought to mind Kurt Weill and suggested that there’s no reason why good chamber music can’t also register as fine art song or splendid cabaret."
~ Jeff Kaliss, San Francisco Classical Voice, 4/11/10
"...his musical language is fairly well-formed...and a handsome, competent language it is. His quartet owed much, it seemed, to Shostakovich (not the hysterical, paranoid Shostakovich, but the classicist aspect of that composer), as well as popular music...This is not to suggest that Wade's music is all sunshine and puppy dogs; the second movement of his quartet was angry and dramatic, with a lyrical, mournful contrasting section, and the final movement was laden with slow, octatonic gloom (and what appeared to be a quote at the end—Schubert's D minor quartet)."
~ Christian Hertzog, San Diego Arts, 2/13/09
"The second half began with Silver Apples (2008), four moon-related poems set by CMASH Executive Director Wade. The postmodernist style was extremely engaging and humorous, with a fine funereal melody in the opening number, "The Moon," by Robert Louis Stevenson, switching to ragtime in Edgar Allan Poe's "Eldorado." Here Moss really strutted her stuff with some very creative scat routines. Even the pianist chimed in with several ominous comments as the poem's Shade recommended boldly riding down the Valley of Shadow "if you seek for Eldorado." Marchlike then waltzlike sections of the third poem, William Butler Yeats' "The Cat and the Moon," were effectively conjured, appropriate for the words "When two close kindred meet,/What better than call a dance?" "
~ Jeff Dunn, San Francisco Classical Voice, 1/24/09