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The Documentary Podcast In the Studio: Steve Reich

BBC News14-04-2025
For 60 years, New York composer Steve Reich has been one of classical music's most celebrated revolutionaries. Pioneering minimalism in the 1960s, a musical style based on repetition and shifting rhythms, his strange experiments with cassette tape led to orchestral masterpieces – now performed around the world. His career has not only helped define the latest era of classical music, but had an enormous influence on pop, rock and electronica. He has helped shape 20th Century music in a way few can claim to match. To mark 60 years since his first major piece,1965's It's Gonna Rain, he takes Alastair Shuttleworth through the process and stories behind some of his greatest works, including Clapping Music, Different Trains and City Life. He also reflects on his legacy, his plans for the future and what, at the age of 88, still inspires him to compose
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James Packer's ex Jodhi Meares reveals the real reason why she left Sydney for a new life in Byron Bay
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Steve Reich: Jacob's Ladder; Traveler's Prayer album review – at nearly 90, he's as energetic as ever
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Three months ago, Nonesuch brought out an updated version of its superbly comprehensive survey of Steve Reich's collected works. The 27 discs included the first recordings of Reich's most recent scores, Traveler's Prayer and Jacob's Ladder, and now, for those who already owned the set from its previous incarnation, it has released those two works together on their own. Both pieces were composed during the Covid lockdown, and are scored for four singers and an instrumental ensemble; in both cases, too, they have Hebrew texts taken from the Old Testament. In almost every other respect, though, the two pieces are very different. Traveler's Prayer, first performed in 2021, is meditative and static, floating, almost ritualised. Those who associate Reich's music with insistent rhythmic movement will find little of that here, and Reich has described the result as 'closer to Josquin des Prez than Stravinsky'. The long, sinuously intertwining vocal lines for the pairs of sopranos and tenors make constant use of canons, yet harmonically the music stays rooted to the spot, without the magical shifts of tonality that give so much of Reich's music its allure. Jacob's Ladder, though, returns immediately to the propulsive, exuberant Reich, as the words from Genesis describing Jacob's vision of a ladder to heaven are intoned by the vocalists over busy, insistent string and wind figures whose gently clashing dissonances add just a little edge to the textures. This buoyant music is joyously, inexhaustibly energetic; it's hard to believe it was composed by a man who will be 90 next year. This article includes content hosted on We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Listen on Apple Music (above) or Spotify

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