POX: Steve Reich

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train music

― $corpium ($corpium), Monday, 5 April 2004 22:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Do you mean "Different Trains" or his soundtrack for "Buns of Steel"?

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Monday, 5 April 2004 22:20 (twenty-one years ago)

piano phase
come out
its gonna rain

just those 3 thanks

― mullygrubber (gaz), Monday, 5 April 2004 22:28 (twenty-one years ago)

music for 18 musicians (ECM recording)
four sections, first movement
desert music
it's gonna rain
drumming (nonsuch version)
piano phase
four organs (tilson thomas / glass / reich / gibson performance, 30:00 -- at least I think it was gibson. the edition that had cage's '3 dances' on the flip, and a picture of the four of them looking up at the camera.)

― (Jon L), Monday, 5 April 2004 22:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Drumming.

― noodle vague (noodle vague), Monday, 5 April 2004 22:41 (twenty-one years ago)

come out
its gonna rain
4 organs
drumming
M18M
Music for Large Ensembles
6 Marimbas (never heard the original version for 6 pianos)
Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ
Tehillim
Octet

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Monday, 5 April 2004 22:51 (twenty-one years ago)

this is the version of four organs I was thinking of. got it wrong, no gibson or glass. I was confusing it with forgot about octet!

― (Jon L), Monday, 5 April 2004 22:52 (twenty-one years ago)

this is the version of four organs I was thinking of. got it wrong, no gibson or glass. I was confusing it with this recording which I haven't heard.

forgot about octet!

― (Jon L), Monday, 5 April 2004 22:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Tehillim
Violin Phase
Come Out
It's Gonna Rain
Drumming
Music for 18 Musicians
Music for a Large Ensemble
Octet
Tokyo/Vermont Counterpoint, for MIDI marimba (arr. Mika Yoshida)
Piano Phase (though I can hardly remember how it goes)

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Monday, 5 April 2004 23:08 (twenty-one years ago)

4 organs
come out, esp. 2nd part

― sexyDancer, Monday, 5 April 2004 23:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Nobody's repping for Electric Counterpoint?

Music for 18 Musicians
Electric Counterpoint
Different Trains
Six Marimbas
New York Counterpoint
Music for Mallet Instruments, Voice, and Organ

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 5 April 2004 23:14 (twenty-one years ago)

clapping music.

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 5 April 2004 23:43 (twenty-one years ago)

I found the vinyl for that version of Four Organs a few months ago ... beyond awesome.

His pieces are so long, here's the first V that I can think of:

Four Organs
Drumming
It's Gonna Rain
Six Pianos
Drumming

― Barry Bruner (Barry Bruner), Monday, 5 April 2004 23:55 (twenty-one years ago)

six marimbas is good too.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 00:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ
Music for 18 Musicians
Three Tales (Jeez!)
Piano Phase
Sextet
Octet
Pendulum Music

At one time I would have definitely said Tehillim but I really didn't like it the last time I listened.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 03:38 (twenty-one years ago)

electric counterpoint is underrated here.

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 17:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Totally agree.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 17:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I hadn't listened to it in years but I just put it on because of you. It's great.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 04:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I heard a live performance of Drumming tonight (parts 1 and 2, anyway). I hadn't heard the piece in ages, and I'd never heard it live -- or seen it! Eight percussionists clustered around half as many marimbas was a sight to behold...

I was skeptical that the singing-along-with-the-resultant-patterns aspect would work well live; I always assumed it took a bit of studio trickery to make this blend in properly. But it worked like a charm.

Just a student group -- they must have rehearsed a LOT!

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Sunday, 11 April 2004 05:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Reich is performing parts of Drumming soon in nyc at the Kitchen benefit, the same night as pieces by Glass, Ashley, Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk and pauline oliveros!

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Sunday, 11 April 2004 05:14 (twenty-one years ago)

*drool*

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Sunday, 11 April 2004 05:26 (twenty-one years ago)

to clarify, all those people are performing, not just having their pieces performed! I didn't even think Glass and Reich were on talking terms...

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Sunday, 11 April 2004 05:36 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe they'll leave the hall during each other's pieces (like Reich vs. Babbitt in the early days of Bang on a Can)!

Since it's a benefit event, tix are $100-$200, so I don't feel quite so bad about not being in NYC for this. I would just be home cursing my poverty.

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Sunday, 11 April 2004 05:44 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm going. I've missed too many oppurtunities to see music like this, in favor of 1,000 crappy bands in a 1,000 crappy venues. I'm especially excited to hear Meredith Monk in person. What would make this truly perfect is if afterwords, we all got to go lie on some pillows in some weird all-night spot and listen to Terry Riley play the organ for 4 hours.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Sunday, 11 April 2004 06:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually, that's sound reasoning. (I have, on v. rare occasions, spent over $100 on a meal, so why not shell out that much for what promises to be a truly memorable concert.)

However, I still won't be in NYC :-(

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Sunday, 11 April 2004 06:12 (twenty-one years ago)

I heard a live performance of Drumming tonight (parts 1 and 2, anyway). I hadn't heard the piece in ages, and I'd never heard it live -- or seen it! Eight percussionists clustered around half as many marimbas was a sight to behold...

It's exciting just to watch them perform it, I agree. I feared for the musicians' ability to play it without screwing up. When I heard it, there was something about the acoustics of the particular hall which was making some sort of added beat pattern or something. It was very effective, though probably unintentional.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Sunday, 11 April 2004 16:44 (twenty-one years ago)

I remember seeing it in concert once and watching about three different people seated before me in the audience nodding their heads to it, and each of them were following completely different rhythms. was perfect.

― (Jon L), Sunday, 11 April 2004 21:17 (twenty-one years ago)

What would make this truly perfect is if afterwords, we all got to go lie on some pillows in some weird all-night spot and listen to Terry Riley play the organ for 4 hours.

After-party at the Dream House, yo!

― hstencil, Sunday, 11 April 2004 21:18 (twenty-one years ago)

The ECM version (yes it has to be this one, the pacing and tension are jawdropping) of Music for 18 Musicians is sublime, eternal, terrifyingly beautiful sound.

― Clarke B. (Clarke B.), Tuesday, 13 April 2004 00:48 (twenty-one years ago)

My record library has that ECM LP, and the first reich I ever heard but I felt I satisfied my curiosity and never really went back for more of his music. Maybe time to revisit.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 13 April 2004 09:04 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

Reich has a new album out. I did not know. (There's no proper Reich thread.)

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Saturday, 15 October 2005 15:01 (nineteen years ago)

eleven months pass...

Belated Happy 70th Birthday, Steve Reich! (Er, not that I expect him to see this.)

― R_S (RSLaRue), Friday, 6 October 2006 16:04 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.barbican.org.uk/reich
I only wish I'd made it to one of those events.

― LC (Damian), Friday, 6 October 2006 16:14 (eighteen years ago)

September 29, 2006
Steve Reich, Sunny? Well, It Is His Birthday
By ANNE MIDGETTE
Steve Reich has moved to the country.
For decades this composer has been a quintessential voice of downtown New York. And to mark his 70th birthday, on Tuesday, the city’s leading cultural institutions are joining forces in an unprecedented celebratory collaboration, Steve Reich@70, offering a month (more or less) of his music at Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center and elsewhere.
But Mr. Reich left Lower Manhattan for Westchester earlier this summer. And he is very, very happy about it.
“It’s really a pleasure,” he said by phone last week. “I used to be a composer, but now I’m into home improvement.”
“Sunny” is hardly an adjective most people would have applied to Mr. Reich for most of his life. Words like “intense,” “driven” and “caffeinated” came more readily to mind. But sunny, it seems, he has become, waxing lyrical about his new house (built by the Modernist architect William N. Breger) and as excited about the coming celebrations as, well, a boy waiting for his birthday.
And this new warmth may be reflected in his music.
Mr. Reich has always been a distinctive voice. His classification as a minimalist, grouped with Philip Glass, has come to seem, with the years, increasingly irrelevant. You could say that Mr. Reich stripped music down to its bare essentials in seminal works like “Clapping Music” (1972), written for two performers and their hands, or “Drumming” (1971), an hour-plus piece written entirely for percussion instruments. But even those pieces, spare in means, have their own eloquence.
Elements have steadily been added over the years: more instruments, human voices (with “Tehillim” in 1981), more visuals, more stories. The last have been a particular feature of Mr. Reich’s collaboration with his wife, the video artist Beryl Korot, which has produced ambitious music theater works like “The Cave” (1990-3), an exploration of Jewish and Muslim beliefs, or “Three Tales” (2002), which challenged a range of attitudes among scientists.
Meanwhile the music has gotten not only fuller, but freer.
“There’s a different generosity,” said Jennifer Bilfield, who was president of Mr. Reich’s publishers, Boosey & Hawkes, before moving in August to become artistic and executive director of Stanford Lively Arts in California. “His writing is more expansive. ‘Proverb’ ” — from 1995 — “is a piece that struck me as a very decisive shift. There’s a different intimacy, an inner quiet that’s very moving.”
It was Ms. Bilfield who had the idea of getting Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Academy to collaborate on Mr. Reich’s birthday, an idea nobody else thought would work. The three presenters are, after all, competitors in an increasingly tough market. But Mr. Reich had close relationships with all of them, and Ms. Bilfield was already braced for one of them to call her and ask about doing a festival for his birthday, which would keep the other two out of the picture.
“It was really to pre-empt what would have been a more awkward discussion,” Ms. Bilfield said. “I basically picked up the phone and said, ‘Can you imagine what a great energy it would be, what a great example for the presenting world?’ And each institution had a different relationship with Steve. When the parties came to the table, there was no tug of war, not at all.”
The Brooklyn Academy will focus on dance, including the American premiere of “Variations for Vibes, Piano and Strings,” commissioned for the choreographer Akram Khan, which will open the festival on the actual birthday. Carnegie Hall will concentrate on instrumental music, including a training workshop and the American premiere of Mr. Reich’s latest work, “Daniel Variations,” written in memory of the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. And Lincoln Center presents vocal works, including three performances of “The Cave.”
“Daniel Variations,” co-commissioned by the Daniel Pearl Foundation, interweaves texts from the Old Testament Book of Daniel and Pearl’s own writings. The Book of Daniel, Mr. Reich pointed out, is set in Babylon — present-day Iraq. The piece blends in a string quartet, which at the words “My name is Daniel Pearl” takes off, Mr. Reich said, in a major key. (Mr. Pearl was a violinist.)
“It’s a very un-Steve Reich-like, expressive piece of music,” Mr. Reich said.
As if to warn his fans not to expect too much more of this baroque phase, he added: “The last few works have been very open, very expressive, very free, very different. Now I’ve kind of got a yen to go medieval.”
But his inner romantic may already have been outed.
For his 70th birthday Nonesuch has released a new box set, “Phases” (Nonesuch 79962-2), with a selection of Mr. Reich’s greatest hits, most of them in the recordings made with the ensemble he founded in 1966, Steve Reich and Musicians, which he refers to as “original instruments.” The performances are very fine. But it’s fascinating to listen to recordings made by another group a generation later.
Mr. Reich’s ensemble focuses on presenting the composition; the younger group, Alarm Will Sound, crack performers all, also focuses on interpreting it. On that band’s CD of “Tehillim” and “The Desert Music” (Cantaloupe Music CA21009), Mr. Reich’s music takes on a whole new dimension of ravishing beauty, beauty that was in there all along.
And Mr. Reich embraces the idea that other people are performing his works, and performing them so well.
“What impresses me,” he said, “is the ease that younger musicians have playing my music, not only right, but idiomatically.” On a recent trip to Latvia he heard a performance of “Music for 18 Musicians” (1974-76). “These people were burning,” he said. “I wasn’t sure where Latvia was, but they knew where I was.”
Sitting in Pound Ridge, still surrounded by packing boxes, in his striking new house (Mr. Breger was also the architect of the Civic Center Synagogue, where Mr. Reich and Ms. Korot were married), he sounded, well, downright expansive. And his goals, for once, seemed perfectly simple.

“What do I want?” he said. “I want people to love the music, not to feel, ‘What, him again?’ It seems that the music is holding up over time. That’s the most gratifying thing.”

I don't really get the idea that warmth or expressiveness is something new in his music. I always found the timbres of Tehillim, Drumming, and Music for 18 Musicians, in particular, to be pretty warm. In fact, that's one of the thing I think contribures to their strength.

Can't you be intense and sunny at the same time?

― R_S (RSLaRue), Friday, 6 October 2006 16:19 (eighteen years ago)

there's still time, LC. most of the events are tomorrow and Sunday.

― zebedee (zebedee), Friday, 6 October 2006 16:50 (eighteen years ago)

Actually "warm" and "sunny" are words I thought most people associate with Reich, while I can't imagine anyone referring to his work (other than the really early pieces) as "driven" or "caffeinated." It sounds like the journalist either only really knew his earliest work or was listening to Philip Glass instead.

― Sundar (sundar), Friday, 6 October 2006 17:20 (eighteen years ago)

(Hrm, I suppose I could see "Different Trains" or "Cello Counterpoint" being driven but it still seems like a weird general statement to make.)

― Sundar (sundar), Friday, 6 October 2006 17:28 (eighteen years ago)

there's still time, LC.

Alas, I'm at the wrong end of the country.

― LC (Damian), Friday, 6 October 2006 20:52 (eighteen years ago)

A Steve Reich POX is hard, as you'd probably need the box set to be selective in picking ten. I own and like a few of his albums, but an OPO would be more appropriate, as would a re-issue of that recording of Four Organs mentioned upthread.

― LC (Damian), Friday, 6 October 2006 21:53 (eighteen years ago)

For what it's worth, this is the tracklisting of the box set that's just come out, a POXIV, if you will (sorry):

Disc: 1
1. Music For 18 Musicians

Disc: 2
1. Different Trains
2. Tehillim
3. Eight Lines

Disc: 3
1. You Are
2. New York Counterpoint
3. Cello Counterpoint
4. Electric Counterpoint
5. Triple Quartet

Disc: 4
1. Come Out
2. Proverb
3. Desert Music

Disc: 5
1. Music For Mallet Instruments Voices And Organ
2. Drumming

― LC (Damian), Friday, 6 October 2006 21:58 (eighteen years ago)

1. Different Trains
2. Tehillim

this set is for us jews.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 6 October 2006 23:10 (eighteen years ago)

Another Reich/Nonesuch box set? I had no idea the other one was out of print. This one seems rather arbitrary by comparison.

Anyway, my POX:

1. Eight Lines (Octet)
2. Four Organs (Bang on a Can) *
3. Four Organs (Reich/Gibson/Murphy/Chambers/Glass)
4. Music for 18 Musicians
5. Music for a Large Ensemble (12 78)
6. The Four Sections (Winds & Brass)
7. Phase Patterns
8. Piano Phase
9. Six Marimbas
10. Violin Phase (10 67)

(* Four Organs is my favorite Reich piece, but I haven't gotten around to collecting all the versions yet. Some purists seem to have a grudge against Bang on a Can's performance, so I'm assuming there are better versions that will take its place someday. In the meantime, though...)

― Myke. (Myke Weiskopf), Friday, 6 October 2006 23:29 (eighteen years ago)

This set sounds really inferior to buying things a la carte, although I guess that's easy to say as someone who has already heard a lot of Reich (though not everything).

― R_S (RSLaRue), Friday, 6 October 2006 23:32 (eighteen years ago)

I don't like "Four Organs" but it has some modern classical heavy hitters behind it on this thread. (I actually haven't heard it in a long time, possibly as long as a decade or more, so it's hard to say what I would think if I listened to it right now.)

― R_S (RSLaRue), Friday, 6 October 2006 23:34 (eighteen years ago)

I got the box in the mail and am digging it quite a bit. I'd never heard Music For 18 Musicians before; it's real purty-like.

― pdf (Phil Freeman), Saturday, 7 October 2006 12:14 (eighteen years ago)

Listening to the Nonesuch edition of 18 Musicians in the morning is slowly becoming a ritual for me.

― Michael F Gill (Michael F Gill), Saturday, 7 October 2006 14:11 (eighteen years ago)

I'm late to the 18 Musicians band-wagon and I can't figure out what took me so long to pick up this addictive masterpiece.

― Jeff K (jeff k), Saturday, 7 October 2006 14:56 (eighteen years ago)

i'm very surprised phil had never heard "...18 musicians"!

― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 7 October 2006 15:14 (eighteen years ago)

Me too, I think that might be my favorite Reich composition. (I'm very surprised I still haven't bought a recording of it.)

― R_S (RSLaRue), Saturday, 7 October 2006 15:49 (eighteen years ago)

Desert Music is my jam.

― ramon fernandez (ramon fernandez), Sunday, 8 October 2006 04:59 (eighteen years ago)

Skipping 100 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEgrN1QTAqE

― Maresn3st, Tuesday, 24 December 2019 00:46 (five years ago)

six months pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqQVSohnLdA

― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 21:47 (five years ago)

four months pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShgWc2OlQdc

― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 2 December 2020 19:31 (four years ago)

Really thought that was going to be a parody using an Eminem acapella

― change display name (Jordan), Wednesday, 2 December 2020 19:33 (four years ago)

Nice idea, I made one - https://soundcloud.com/nowherians/reich-eminem_1

― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 2 December 2020 20:28 (four years ago)

Very cool.

― Bidh boladh a' mhairbh de 'n láimh fhalaimh (dowd), Wednesday, 2 December 2020 20:36 (four years ago)

Haha omg, yes

Please post this on youtube with a serious title.

― change display name (Jordan), Wednesday, 2 December 2020 20:40 (four years ago)

ten months pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b78wdMc3m7U

― Maresn3st, Saturday, 16 October 2021 14:57 (three years ago)

i love this

― class project pat (m bison), Saturday, 16 October 2021 16:19 (three years ago)

gets to the emotional core that the slow sections of tehillim do so well

― class project pat (m bison), Saturday, 16 October 2021 16:20 (three years ago)

also i was playing this and my son goes "this sounds like steve reich" so thats cool

― class project pat (m bison), Saturday, 16 October 2021 16:20 (three years ago)

Your son OTM

― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Saturday, 16 October 2021 16:57 (three years ago)

It's like an extrapolated version of that beautiful second movement of WTC 9-11

― Maresn3st, Saturday, 16 October 2021 17:22 (three years ago)

By which I mean third movement, duh

― Maresn3st, Saturday, 16 October 2021 17:26 (three years ago)

Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous

― J. Sam, Saturday, 16 October 2021 18:19 (three years ago)

three months pass...

Huh, had no idea this was in the works:

https://www.nonesuch.com/journal/steve-reich-release-conversations-book-harpercollins-hanover-square-press-march-8-2022-2021-10-01

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 16 January 2022 01:10 (three years ago)

one year passes...

it's 'music for 18 musicians' season tbh

― ꙮ (map), Thursday, 14 September 2023 22:17 (one year ago)

always in season imo

― oatly carmichael (m bison), Thursday, 14 September 2023 22:41 (one year ago)

yay

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Thursday, 14 September 2023 22:42 (one year ago)

I actually played Double Sextet/2×5 on my way to work this morning bc I have a seasonal association with that album.

― jaymc, Friday, 15 September 2023 00:16 (one year ago)

https://x.com/jmcunning/status/775692655795634176?s=20

― jaymc, Friday, 15 September 2023 00:17 (one year ago)

four months pass...

i've been listening to music for 18 musicians for years (the grand valley state university new music ensemble recording), and i have NOT checked out any other steve reich pieces. in mf18m, i love the soft and human quality of the propulsion, the surreal quality of hearing what a computer could play very 'well' instead being played by 'imperfect' but beautifully alive human touch, the slow rise and fall and drift of the motifs, which are gorgeous, and just the very time-stopping, mood-capturing magnetism of the whole thing. what steve reich recordings should i look for next?

― ꙮ (map), Thursday, 25 January 2024 21:04 (one year ago)

Hmm. There's a lot of good phase work he did (Drumming, Clapping, Four Organs, Phase Patterns, etc.) that are similar or related, though not always as transformative/transportative. I know it's not what you asked for, but if you haven't heard it maybe give Philip Glass's "Music With Changing Parts" a shot, it's pretty similar.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 25 January 2024 21:16 (one year ago)

There's a lot of good phase work he did (Drumming, Clapping, Four Organs, Phase Patterns, etc.) that are similar or related, though not always as transformative/transportative.

yeah, those pieces are more lulling or even nullifying, but i actually like that more a lot of the time

― Deflatormouse, Thursday, 25 January 2024 21:22 (one year ago)

It's nearly all worth your time imho, but I'm especially fond of - Double Sextet, Three Movements, Music For A Large Ensemble, and Drumming.

Taking Josh's lead, give Glass' Music in Twelve Parts a try too.

― MaresNest, Thursday, 25 January 2024 21:25 (one year ago)

i'll give these a try. i was just thinking 'maybe i should check out philip glass' so that's perfect. thanks all.

― ꙮ (map), Thursday, 25 January 2024 21:30 (one year ago)

Other recordings of the same piece can be illuminating too. The ECM version of mf18m (feels like a reddit thread) is generally considered definitive (the Nonesuch remake not so good). The Colin Currie Ensemble and Ensemble Signal, younger groups mentored by Reich, have done this and the CCE have also done Drumming, another trance like one. I would try mybe the original Deutsche Grammophone Drumming for a similar thing to what you get from m418m.

― B. Amato (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, 25 January 2024 21:38 (one year ago)

Phase Patterns is the one that was a couple rungs below damn near life changing for me, I like almost everything I’ve heard by him but it all ends up paling in comparison just because that was such a mind shattering event hearing it for the first time. If you’ve heard anything else by him it probably wouldn’t have the same impact though.

― Slim is an Alien, Thursday, 25 January 2024 22:24 (one year ago)

Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ & Music for a Large Ensemble were written around the same time and share a lot of the same vibe as Music for 18 musicians

― bbq, Friday, 26 January 2024 06:32 (one year ago)

"Octet / Music For A Large Ensemble / Violin Phase" on ECM is up there with M418M for me.

― Against The 80s, Friday, 26 January 2024 08:24 (one year ago)

another vote for Drumming

― budo jeru, Friday, 26 January 2024 16:07 (one year ago)

yeah Drumming is 'the one' for me also

― Deflatormouse, Friday, 26 January 2024 18:59 (one year ago)

Besides MF18M, the albums I return to are Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint (the latter is the one that the Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds" samples) and Double Sextet/2x5.

― jaymc, Saturday, 27 January 2024 05:35 (one year ago)

‘eight lines’ is gorgeous

― donna rouge, Saturday, 27 January 2024 06:01 (one year ago)

Some of his pieces have a musical documentary feel about them, most of these feature a clever device in which he transcribes short clips of speech into notes to be tracked alongside with an instrument, cello, or violin usually.

You realise how much music is embedded in our everyday speech patterns, Different Trains and the startling WTC 9/11 are great examples of that method.

― MaresNest, Saturday, 27 January 2024 11:46 (one year ago)

I would like to recommend Tehillim, I feel it's where you can hear his 'human' touch the most; it's also available as the full ECM Recordings boxset with Mf18M, Octet, Violin Phase & MfLE.

― ˈʌglɪɪst preɪ, Saturday, 27 January 2024 18:48 (one year ago)

Oh Tehillim is one of my favorite pieces of music of all time, it can drive me to tears. But I think Map was looking for the more long-form trancelike world of Reich.

Anyhoo, Steve Reich is the guest of honor at this year’s Long Play Festival in Brooklyn, put on by the Bang on a Can organization. Among other works, including M418M, the Mivos Quartet will do his complete works for string quartet, including Different Trains.

― B. Amato (Boring, Maryland), Saturday, 27 January 2024 20:03 (one year ago)

Oh and Drumming will be performs too. I’ve never seen that one performed live. (I saw a local new music group in DC perform M418M several years ago).

― B. Amato (Boring, Maryland), Saturday, 27 January 2024 20:05 (one year ago)

A great in-depth interview with @SteveReich in @FT @FinancialTimes today, in which the composer talks about his early life, obsession with Stravinsky, and recent inspirations.
Read here: https://t.co/GX2l9XcYTO pic.twitter.com/4zD8Gjc1qg
— Steve Reich (@SteveReich) February 2, 2024

― underwater as a compliment (Eazy), Sunday, 4 February 2024 05:03 (one year ago)

"There is brunch-friendly soft rock music being piped in, and on the previous evening the mall hosted a live performance by an Eagles cover band. But Reich, dressed in dark tones and wearing his signature dark baseball cap, has come for the waffles, not the music."

― underwater as a compliment (Eazy), Sunday, 4 February 2024 05:14 (one year ago)

It would be funny if he refused to talk about anything but waffles

― Marten Broadcloak, mild-mannered GOP congressman (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 4 February 2024 18:27 (one year ago)

Glad the article clarified that point, would have definitely expected him to be the type of guy who goes out to breakfast for the soft rock soundtrack and the lore of yesterday’s Eagles cover band

― Slim is an Alien, Sunday, 4 February 2024 18:39 (one year ago)

“What do I want? I want life, I want the music to be played, I want the music to be listened to. I want to know people have felt things,” he says. “I’m very grateful that my music has been listened to and appreciated. It’s a great source of happiness.”

Damn I guess success does bring happiness, get stuffed 'making art should be its own reward' people.

― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Sunday, 4 February 2024 21:53 (one year ago)

one year passes...

Ah. There's a 27 CD box set coming out soon.

― djh, Wednesday, 5 March 2025 19:19 (five months ago)

I found a nice copy of The Desert Music on vinyl last month and it sounds amazing.

― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 5 March 2025 19:23 (five months ago)

The box purports to be a Collected Works but it's actually his collected works for Nonesuch (admittedly the vast bulk of his output), plus a few pieces licensed from other labels. These do not include the stuff he recorded for ECM including the original 1976 version of Music For 18 Musicians. I can't comment on which version is better but someone upthread called the ECM version definitive.

― bored by endless ecstasy (anagram), Thursday, 6 March 2025 10:15 (five months ago)

I was hoping everyone would say "Buy it, DJH. Buy it!" I'm a bit feeble like that.

― djh, Thursday, 6 March 2025 10:53 (five months ago)

Unlike Glass, I don't know if I've never heard a purchasable recorded version of his work that didn't cut it.

Some of the modern recordings, like Eighth Blackbird's version of Double Sextet and 2x5 are amazing, pretty sure that's a Nonsuch release.

I have the 10cd Nonsuch 'Works' box set from the 90s and the revised recording of MF18M from then is great too.

― Maresn3st, Thursday, 6 March 2025 11:43 (five months ago)

*ever heard

― Maresn3st, Thursday, 6 March 2025 11:44 (five months ago)

I was hoping everyone would say "Buy it, DJH. Buy it!" I'm a bit feeble like that.

― djh, Thursday, March 6, 2025 4:53 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha as an owner of the 10-cd works box set and a couple other reich albums, i saw 27 and instantly noped out of there

― kendrick lamaze "to push a baby out" (m bison), Thursday, 6 March 2025 12:48 (five months ago)

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