Memory Unwrapped: Phaedra Ensemble - Slow Change

As part of Memory Unwrapped and Kings Place’s celebration of Steve Reich at 90, Phaedra Ensemble’s Slow Change explores memory and transformation through Reich’s pulsing minimalism, Coltrane’s newly arranged Africa, and Thorvaldsdottir’s expansive Enigma, a UK premiere, where patterns and echoes unfold into shifting landscapes of sound.

Slow Change explores landscapes of memory in the music of Steve Reich and his wider musical world. The programme is built largely around the string quartet, tracing how repetition, transformation, and memory continue to resonate in contemporary music.

His early experiments with phasing created hypnotic ways of listening, where subtle shifts in repetition gradually transformed the musical surface. Violin Phase offers a glimpse of that groundbreaking period, while later works reveal other facets of his voice. WTC 9/11 confronts memory directly, weaving the recorded voices of New Yorkers into a vivid reflection on collective trauma. Triple Quartet channels the rhythmic intensity of Bartók and the intonations of Hebrew singing into a work of relentless drive and energy, pushing the string quartet into thrilling new territory.

One of Reich’s deepest inspirations was John Coltrane, whose modal improvisations showed how repetition and intensity could open new spiritual and emotional spaces. His landmark work Africa, heard here in a new arrangement by Phaedra Co-director Jamie Hamilton, highlights this influence, linking the rhythmic vitality of jazz with the evolving processes of minimalism. And in the UK premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Enigma, sound itself seems to breathe and expand, creating vast landscapes of resonance.

This event will last approximately 100 minutes, including an interval.