“. . . unapologetically tranquil . . . coaxing substance from seemingly vaporous materials.”
— Los Angeles Times

“Music of ethereal simplicity—slow, whispering single—voiced melodies whose notes create internal, fading harmonies. Fink’s music seems of another era, but he has shaped and refined his spare style greatly—it is distinctly his own.”
— L.A. Weekly

“Spare, refined, wholesome, satisfying. . . . If Erik Satie had lived in the early 21st century, he might have written in this fashion . . . quiet, harmonically beguiling. Fink is onto something. Check it out.”
— Michael Barone, Minnesota Public Radio

“The ethereal feel of Satie and the dreaminess of Debussy.”
— All—Music Guide

“Infinite poetry in sound.”
— Blow Up magazine (Italy)

“Feldman, Satie, and Liszt are suggested by the solo—keyboard works; I Hear It in the Rain suggests Gavin Bryars’s early ECM New Series discs.”
— Fanfare

“All very evocative.”
— International Record Review

“Works of stunning beauty and simplicity. . . . they whisper to you in the night, a single solitary voice that echoes from within the silence.”
— Incursion Music Review (Canada)

“The title ‘I Hear It in the Rain’ aptly sums it up: patinas of notes, near and far, heard and half—heard. It’s an astonishing, entrancing album, careful and considered, yet never too precious or conceited.”
—Rupert Loydell, Tangents (UK)

“Often it’s as simple as this — for true treasure, let go of the precious. Michael Jon Fink—operating within New Music but sidestepping much of its systematic, lab—dulled pretention—proves it on this album of close—up and subtle music . . .

There’s something of Gavin Bryars’ evanescent emotional skill to Fink’s music, something of the soft spatial blur of the Evanses (Bill and Gil) . . .

This is not about feelings being directly manipulated. Fink’s music induces them, drawing into the gaps and implications between the notes. A lot of it is timing: the attuned sensibilities of a performer and a composer both inspired by the subtle, near—telepathic interreactions of small—group jazz. . . .

I could go on and on to you about the restraint and wisdom in Michael Jon Fink’s work. But what gets me every time is its sheer and honest beauty.

There’s a disciplined mind at work here, but one in touch with such universality of feelings that praising his deft economy and musical grammar seems reductive.

I could pin him down further for you, but what matters might be beyond by reach—though, even as I finish this, it’s come filtering through the air to reach back to me again.

Simple. Special. Indispensable.”
— Misfit City (UK)

“Combining the crystalline beauty of Debussy with the quiet impermanence of Erik Satie. . . . a calm musical universe related to the one developed by the late Morton Feldman.”
— I Heard a Noise webzine (Romania)

Equally lovely, if less lush, are some piano pieces from the late 1970s by Michael Jon Fink: tonal, sparse, with a lonely Harold—Budd feel, and beautifully recorded. The ’70s were a time you could indulge simple yet completely counterintuitive gestures — as Fink does in ‘Vocalise’ by having a cello and piano play the same slow, single—note melody in unison — with stunning effect.”
— Kyle Gann, Arts Journal.com