The Colin Currie Group offer an involving and scintillating experience of one of America’s great composers as part of the Time Unwrapped series at Kings Place.
At the Edinburgh Playhouse, choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her dance company Rosas present Rain, set to the music of minimalist composer Steve Reich, for the Edinburgh International Festival.
Wayne McGregor's triple bill at the Royal Opera House celebrates his 10th year as Resident Choreographer of the Royal Ballet. His insatiable curiosity and driving creativity has brought challenge, change and occasionally controversy to the cornerstone of British ballet.
Five hours of repetitive music on a Sunday evening may be a hellish way for some to end the week; fortunately, I belong in the second category. A concert series named “Steve Reich Unlimited” therefore required no further selling points.
From the ultimate process piece,to a recent video-opera, this central concert of the Barbican's 'Steve Reich at 80' weekend reminded us what the fuss has been all about.
Steve Reich turned 80 last month, and New Yorkers finally pencilled him, between the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and the daunting presidential election, for big birthday bash at Carnegie Hall.
The Proms left its plush crimson comfort zone of the Royal Albert Hall and headed down to Peckham in south-east London for two concerts of muisc by Steve Reich, given by the Multi-Story Orchestra in a disused car park
A mesmerising all-Reich programme by the Colin Currie Group and Synergy Vocals produced lustrous textures and sonorous tones, culminating in the astonishing Music for 18 Musicians.
Colin Currie Group and Synergy Vocals showcase seminal works by Steve Reich: Music for Pieces of Wood (1973), Quartet (2013), & Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76)
In an evening entitled “Pulse: Steve Reich and his influences”, the Aurora Orchestra set out to give three examples of pieces that influenced American minimalist composer Steve Reich alongside performing two of his pieces.
Colin Currie's all Reich programme included a world première, the Quartet for two pianos and two vibraphones, but the newer works were overshadowed by his epic 1985 Sextet.
Steve Reich's 'opus number one', It's Gonna Rain, for magnetic tape, and The Desert Music for chamber ensemble and singers, came together for this Late Night Prom. Both pieces were almost hypnotic, and made for a very intense, but highly satisfying musical experience.
For 24 years, the festival of Dark Music Days has fuelled imagination with contemporary music, thanks to the initiative of the Icelandic Composer’s Union. And with the advent of a glamorous concert hall in the midst of crisis and bankruptcy, the glittering Harpa, the crowds have grown in numbers every year.
Ensemble ACJW performed works by Berio, Reich, and Bartók with conductor David Robertson and soprano Dawn Upshaw at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. This attractively programmed concert featured an admirable first half, though the Bartók left something to be desired.
The centrepiece of Nonclassical’s “Pioneers of Percussion” festival was a rousing marathon of a concert at Scala, a large (mostly) rock venue near King’s Cross. It was a rich, varied, high-energy, happily chaotic affair that lasted into the wee hours of the morning.
The Southbank’s The Rest is Noise continues to draw the crowds, although the promise of Steve Reich himself can’t have made this concert too hard to sell. Reich’s own contribution to this evening, the culmination of a weekend of music and events entitled “Superpower”, was limited to some clapping and letting go of a microphone.
The flute is one of the most venerable musical instruments we have (the earliest archaeological records have been dated to over 35,000 years ago), and as Claire Chase proved Thursday night at The Kitchen in Chelsea, it retains an energy that ensures it will continue to play a vital role in the future of concert music.
The north-Norwegian town of Bodø has a special relationship with trains. Bodø is the last station on the Norwegian rail system, and the construction of the railway that goes between the towns of Trondheim and Bodø is one of the most gruesome stories in modern Norwegian history.
“I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music”, Steve Reich wrote in his 1968 essay Music as a Gradual Process. His music of the 1960s, from tape pieces such as It’s Gonna Rain to instrumental works like Piano Phase, employed phasing and looping techniques.
Inside Juilliard’s Paul Hall, a splendid spectacle of geometric juxtaposition greets the eyes. The wood-paneled interior is a busy mishmash of thin vertical rectangles and squares of varying sizes, whose right angles are further contrasted by a row of glossy spherical lights on each wall.
The program page for Kronos Quartet’s program at the Cleveland Museum of Art on 18 January was typical of their concerts: a daunting list of mostly unfamiliar composers and every work either written or arranged for Kronos (David Harrington and John Sherba, violins; Hank Dutt, viola; and Jeffrey Zeigler, cello).
Kent Nagano took to the stage tonight, microphone in hand, slowly becoming encircled by a forest of empty music stands, 50 in all. It is only natural to provide a word of explanation for a concert which contained Ligeti’s Fluxus piece Poème symphonique, scored for 100 metronomes, and Reich’s Clapping Music, amidst more standard works.
Kings Place is my new favourite London arts venue. It is the venue of choice for several prominent ensembles, and it is easy to see why. Acoustically fantastic concert halls provide opportunities for all sorts of music in a formal concert setting, whilst the large open spaces allow for more relaxed performances, where the audience can buy drinks, sit down and listen (or not).
A successful performance of Steve Reich’s music requires performers with stamina, a groove, and an audience willing to come along for the ride. The music itself is at its best when Reich layers gesture on top of gesture, creating a complex rhythmic tapestry that can put listeners into a trance and trigger unexpected emotions.
When it comes to new music, the parameters by which we usually observe classical musicians often fade away. In this case we are speaking about eight cellists, and given this program, it would be of little use to comment on the purity of their sound. Tonight’s scores, in fact, frequently required the sound to be pierced and dirty.
As I sat in Herbst Theater last night awaiting the appearance of clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and guitarist Eliot Fisk, my mind wandered to the analogy of food and wine. With an abundance of delectable cuisine and fine wine across the world, the combination of such pairings are endless.
Minimal music, the rhythm- and/or repetition-focused classical genre from the later 20th century, is well represented at Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. This will surely come to a climax during the 2013 edition of the biannual World Minimal Music Festival, but as Marinissen of Lunapark stated before this warm-up edition: "We just couldn't wait".
True to their usual standard of extraordinary craftsmanship and virtuosic dancing, Richard Alston Dance Company brought a mixed bill of new and old works to Sadler’s Wells. The evening’s programme included three pieces: Alston’s Roughcut, which premièred in 1990; Lie of the Land, a work by rehearsal director Martin Lawrance; and one of Alston’s newest choreographies, A Ceremony of Carols.
This Monday, the percussion quartet ensemblebash played the first of three concerts which they are scheduled to play this year at Kings Place in celebration of their twentieth anniversary. Over their twenty years, ensemblebash have come to be known as one of the most inventive and talented percussion groups worldwide. And they have just about earned the right to whatever typography they want.
Do you remember when Steve Reich, “America’s greatest living composer”, came to your school concert and you performed his seminal work Clapping Music with the great man? No? Well, Joshua Kellie does. Joshua was one of the talented (and fortunate) St Paul’s School pupils chosen to perform in a concert in honour of the minimalist composer on his 75th birthday.
Sometimes it seemed as though the sun would never set on Dawn. At nearly three hours long, it made for a blockbuster opening to the '50 Years of Minimalism' festival. Thankfully, the Labèque sisters, a rock ensemble, electronic keyboard and the obligatory tape machine on stage were brilliant company for the whole, overlong affair.
American Pioneers, the latest Hebrides Ensemble programme, featured five U.S. composers in what musical director, William Conway described as "a slice" of contemporary music from that vast country. Minimalism, as one might expect, featured. Jennifer Higdon's Smash (2005) opened with what felt like a celebration of our obsession with speed.
Steve Reich has been a Barbican mainstay of 2011. In his 75th birthday year, the composer’s significant influence on contemporary classical music was honoured with the Reverberations Festival in May.
The UBS Soundscapes: Eclectica concert at LSO St. Luke's on the 12th October, billed as a celebration of Steve Reich's 75th birthday, was indeed a celebration, and also a tribute. The performance, by a chamber group of string, percussion and keyboard players from the London Symphony Orchestra, was infused with warm affection for the music.
