"I’m writing from a European sabbatical, and sought out Siegel, whose music has long charmed me. The last time I had run across him was in 1982, at New Music America in Chicago. There he played a silky, sensuous continuum for piano and electronics called Autumn Resonance. It was, for the time, a classic instance of West Coast minimalism; shimmering chords limned by a halo of tape delay rotating around pivot notes with the languor of Harold Budd and the perpetual motion of Steve Reich. A minimalist streak survives in Siegel’s music to the present day; but from the beginning it was clear that his fascination was not with stasis but with transformation and even formal surprise."

"Siegel’s come a long way since his California minimalism days, yet any Europe-ification of his music has been only subtle: aesthetically, I still have to think of him as American. A recent (2005) piece for voice and guitar, Sappho Fragments, is entirely free from minimalist process, yet still languidly diatonic. His magnum opus to date is a science fiction opera written to his wife’s libretto: Livstegn, or “Signs of Life (1993-94), about a scientist plunged into a personal crisis by his unexpected discovery of intelligent life on one of Jupiter’s moons. An attractive, slightly John Adams-ish work that allows full play to Siegel’s ability to meld electronic sound effects with repetitive instrumental patterns, the piece received nine performances in 1994 and he hopes to revive it some time. It sounds well worth reviving."

Kyle Gann, Chamber Music Magazine, February 2008