Steve Reich

A pioneer of minimalist music, Steve Reich is one of the most influential and widely-performed composers in the contemporary field, recognized in particular for his rhythmic innovations, his use of repetition and the technique of phase shifting. Born in New York City on October 3, 1936 into a middle-class Jewish family, Stephen Michael Reich was just one year old when his parents divorced. He grew up between his hometown with his lawyer father and Los Angeles, where his mother June Sillman (later June Carroll), a Broadway musical singer, had settled. He began by taking piano lessons, but became more interested in popular music and jazz, playing drums in a band and learning percussion with New York Philharmonic timpanist Roland Kohloff. Enrolled at Cornell University, he studied philosophy and wrote a thesis on Ludwig Wittgenstein, while taking private composition lessons with Hall Overton, before studying music at the Juilliard School (1958-1961), with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. Married and divorced for the first time, he left New York for California and continued his studies at Mills College in Oakland (1961-1963), where his teachers included Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud, while Gunther Schuller introduced him to African music. In San Francisco, he joined the Tape Music Center alongside Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick and Terry Riley, participating in the creation of the latter's cult piece In C (1964), for which he suggested the use of a continuous pulse. Author of the music for three of Robert Nelson's experimental films, including Plastic Haircut (1963), Steve Reich uses magnetic tape as a medium for his work on loops and creates the technique of phase shifting, which he experiments with in his works Music for Two or More Pianos (1964), It's Gonna Rain (1965), in which a phrase from a preacher's sermon is repeated, and Come Out (1966), based on the testimony of one of the Harlem Six, accused of murder during the Harlem riots of 1964. Returning to New York, Steve Reich became involved with members of the Minimalist movement, painters and sculptors such as Philip Glass and Moondog. He continued in this vein with Melodica (1966), Piano Phase (1967), Violin Phase (1967) and Pendulum Music (1968), a sound installation creating feedback with a device of microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers, another example of process music as defined in his manifesto Music as a Gradual Process. In the summer of 1970, he went to Ghana to study polyrhythm and African percussion with Gideon Alorwoyie, and on his return composed the piece Drumming, for which he formed the ensemble Steve Reich and Musicians, premiered on December 3, 1971 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In the same vein, he returned to California to study Indonesian gamelan with Nyoman Sumandhi, before composing Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973). Meanwhile, the musician created Clapping Music (1972), with the clapping of two people as the only "instrument". His work on rhythm and pulsation culminated in a major work, Music for 18 Musicians (1974-1976), premiered on April 24, 1976 at The Town Hall (New York), then recorded in the studio and released by the ECM label. In May 1976, Reich married visual artist Beryl Korot, who became a regular collaborator. In search of a new creative path, he became interested in cantillation as part of his rapprochement with Judaism, and undertook a trip to Jerusalem, which led to the composition of Tehillim (1981), inspired by the Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible, for four women's voices, concertante ensemble and percussion. Alongside this spiritual journey, the composer completed his minimalist cycle with Music for a Large Ensemble (1978), commissioned by the Holland Festival in Utrecht. Another commission, from the Hessischer Rundfunk, was for Octet, premiered in 1979 and revived in 1983 as Eight Lines, for sixteen instrumentalists including two string quartets. In May 1980, Steve Reich was at the electric organ for the definitive premiere of Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards, an orchestral work commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and previously performed by his ensemble at New York's Carnegie Hall. After Tehillim, his work took a new turn, oriented both towards the voice reciting texts and towards historical themes of a sombre nature, as is the case in his best-known piece, Different Trains (1988), evoking the long journeys of his childhood tossed between his parents and the convoys to the concentration camps during the Second World War. The work, written for string quartet and tape, was a commercial success in the Kronos Quartet's performance, winning a Grammy Award in 1990. The voice is also at the heart of The Desert Music (1983), in a decade that sees the birth of the minimalist, repetitive Counterpoints series: Vermont Counterpoint for flute (1982), New York Counterpoint for clarinets (1985) and Electric Counterpoint for electric guitar (recorded by Pat Metheny in 1987). In 1993, Steve Reich and his wife created the multimedia opera The Cave, dealing with religious issues related to the Old Testament. The couple went on to work on Three Tales (1996-2002). In City Life (1998), the composer focuses on the sounds of New York City, from which he draws live samples. The 2000s saw the creation of Dance Patterns (2002), Cello Counterpoint (2003), You Are (Variations) (2004), Daniel Variations (2006) and Double Sextet (2007). In 2010, WTC 9/11, a tribute to the September 11, 2001 attacks, was completed, and in 2012, Radio Rewrite was inspired by compositions by the band Radiohead. In 2018, Steve Reich returned to the orchestra with Music for Ensemble and Orchestra, followed by Reich Richter (2019), a multidisciplinary performance with German artist Gerhard Richter. Two other vocal works with a spiritual purpose have also seen the light of day: Traveler's Prayer (2020) and Jacob's Ladder (2023).

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