Essential Reich
A pioneer of Minimalism in the mid- to late-1960s, composer Steve Reich (born 1936) has been at the forefront of American avant-garde music ever since, and his influence crosses continents and musical boundaries.
Read more…Drawing on both classical and non-Western influences, including Bach, Stravinsky and Bartók, John Coltrane, African drumming and Balinese gamelan, Reich's music is tonal, harmonic, expressive and accessible, and his large and varied output demonstrates that Minimalism is far more than just repetitions or a fleeting musical trend.
His distinctive music is made up of repetitive patterns and pulses. He combines electronics, tape loops, phases, and fragments of speech or spoken word with traditional instrumentation to create complex textures and multiple shifting layers – hypnotic, engrossing music whose rhythms and patterns move in and out of synchronisation with one another, creating an ambiguous and intriguing range of timbres and effects which grow in complexity and variation. In a piece like 'Piano Phase', Reich transferred the techniques of electronic tape loops and phasing to real instruments: a sequence of pitches played on two pianos moving steadily in and out of sync result in a kaleidoscopic musical narrative.
'Drumming', perhaps his most seminal work and an example of "pure minimalism", uses a single tiny rhythmic cell as the basis for an ambitious large-scale musical structure. 'Different Trains', a personal and deeply moving work, marks his return to the use of sampling where train whistles and interviews with Holocaust survivors are juxtaposed with writing for string quartet.