Steve Reich: “Music for Eighteen Musicians” (2016)
My friend Anton Vizy introduced me to Music for Eighteen Musicians, the 1978 ECM release by the Steve Reich Ensemble. It amazed me.
That was the late ’70s, in central New York. We were getting ready to leave Ithaca and move to Utica, NY.
Then in 1981, Anton had a solo show in Boston. We traveled there to see it. Playing all the time during the exhibition was Reich’s piece. The reviewer for the Globe found it detracted from the showing. I disagreed.
That album would remain my favorite Reich piece until 1988, when the Kronos Quartet released its performance of Reich’s Different Trains. Between those two times, I don’t know when, our son Jeremy gave me a copy of Reich’s earlier pieces, including the stunning tape loop compositions, “Come Out” and “It’s Gonna Rain.” The most recently acquired Reich pieces I have are recordings of Pulse (2013), Quartet (2015), and Six Pianos (1964).
My friendship with Reich is forty years old now and still strong. No other minimalist composer has moved me as consistently as he has. Some of his compositions grab me viscerally, others intellectually. He is an interesting music maker.
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As to other composers of the same ilk, I do own four versions of Terry Riley’s In C. One is by Bang on a Can, done by a mixed ensemble with everything but the kitchen sink thrown in. The second has Paul Hillier conducting and scoring it and is for voices, marimbas and xylophones. The third is done by one performer, multi-taped using two grand pianos, three electric keyboards, a clavichord, four synthesizers, and “some more instruments,” unspecified. The fourth is by the Ragazze String Quartet augmented by a percussion ensemble, Kapok. The only other Riley pieces I have are Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector (Rasgazze plus Slagwerk den Haag) and Keyboard Study #1. Both are brilliant. In C is the classical music equivalent of jazz’s John Coltrane’s Ascension, a pice that the ROVA sax ensemble has shown in two stunning recordings can be bent every which way, once toward brass and reeds orchestra, the second time towards electronic, scratch artists and strings (Electric Ascension).
I have a recording of Scott Johnson’s “John Somebody.” Love that piece. (It drives Esther crazy with its repetition.) I have an album of his string quartets too somewhere. Interesting.
Scott Johnson: “John Somebody” (1982)
I have a fair amount of Philip Glass but find his pieces a more mixed bag than Reich’s. I love the two violin concertos, especially the second, with its short violin cadenzas between the long orchestral movements. I love too his music for dance. Some of the rest of Glass’s music I like, some less so, some not at all. When I was in Cambridge, Mass, one summer, I caught a premiere of Glass’s kind-of opera, The Fall of the House of Usher. I liked it but don’t know how I’d feel about it if I’d heard on record, with time to listen to it and reflect. I have his soundtrack for Dracula, which my memory tells me is much the same as the music for Fall, and find it occasionally but not wholly effective. It works better sprinkling individual cuts into musical mixes, where the difference from the other cuts makes it stand out. I love his score for the movie, Mishima, and hate his Brian Eno album.
At the tail end of the 80s, Glass performed as a solo performer in a package tour of new music –the other artists performing in the series were the Kronos Quartet, the Women of the Calabash, Max Roach’s quartet (Odeon Pope on saxophone), and Henry Threadgill’s seven-player Sextette. The night Glass played, I was trying out new contact lenses and had had a hard day at work. Maybe that’s why I didn’t enjoy him. Without the different timbres and voices of the multi-instrument works to fill out the music and add variety, the music seemed thin, repetitive and tired. I left the concert two-thirds of the way through. That wasn’t Glass, it was the contact lenses. But still, I was underwhelmed that night by the music played.
Reich: Music for Eighteen Musicians
Riley: In C
Chopin: Mazurka in C major
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Here’s Reich’s 1966 “Come Out” translated into dance. It’s worth watching as well as listening to.
Steve Reich: “Come Out” (music from 1966)
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
Kronos Quartet playing the 1st mvt. of Steve Reich’s Different Trains (1988)
Ars Nova Copenhagen: Terry Riley, In C: Paul Hillier scoring and conducting
MUSIC & ME 