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Steve Reich At 80: The Phases Of A Lifetime In Music

Composer Steve Reich, who turned 80 on Oct. 3. Carolyn Cole/LA Times via Getty Images hide caption

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Carolyn Cole/LA Times via Getty Images

Steve Reich At 80: The Phases Of A Lifetime In Music

October 9, 2016 • He's been a hero to musicians from Brian Eno and David Bowie to Radiohead and The National. Now entering his ninth decade, American composer Steve Reich is always looking ahead.

Steve Reich At 80: The Phases Of A Lifetime In Music

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Classical Music In 2015: The Year In Review

Osmo Vänskä conducts the Minnesota Orchestra in Havana, Cuba in May 2015. Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images

Classical Music In 2015: The Year In Review

January 4, 2016 • As a new year begins, take a quick glance back at some of the notable birthdays, anniversaries, awards, trends and farewells that made 2015 unique in classical music.

Fifty Years Of Steve Reich's 'It's Gonna Rain'

Steve Reich, with a phase-shifting pulse gate, photographed in New York in 1969. Nonesuch hide caption

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Nonesuch

Fifty Years Of Steve Reich's 'It's Gonna Rain'

January 27, 2015 • In 1965, a happy accident with tape machines, and the words of a Pentecostal preacher, helped launch the celebrated composer's career.

Philip Glass And Steve Reich At BAM: Together Again Yet Still Apart

Four Organs by Steve Reich was performed Tuesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the 50th anniversary of the Nonesuch label (from left: Philip Glass, Nico Muhly, David Cossin, Timo Andres and Steve Reich). Stephanie Berger hide caption

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Stephanie Berger

Deceptive Cadence

Philip Glass And Steve Reich At BAM: Together Again Yet Still Apart

September 10, 2014 • Estranged colleagues Philip Glass and Steve Reich hadn't appeared together for more than 30 years — until last night in Brooklyn. Yet it was the music, not the reunion, that carried the show.

Over four decades, the Kronos quartet (from left, John Sherba, Sunny Yang, Hank Dutt and David Harrington) has premiered more than 800 pieces. Jay Blakesberg hide caption

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Jay Blakesberg

Deceptive Cadence

Kronos Quartet At 40: Songs We Love

Q2

March 25, 2014 • To mark the venturesome string quartet's 40 years of commissioning and performing new music, composers Steve Reich, Terry Riley and others recall their favorite Kronos memories.

Electric Guitars Amp Up New Classical Music

Some of the 200 guitarists who took part in Rhys Chatham's A Crimson Grail at Lincoln Center's Out of Doors Festival in August 2009. YouTube hide caption

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YouTube

Deceptive Cadence

Electric Guitars Amp Up New Classical Music

July 10, 2013 • Not that long ago, a composer using an electric guitar would have seemed like a crime against the state of classical music.

Music Interviews

Steve Reich: 'Music for 18 (Cornfed) Musicians'

February 3, 2008 • Grand Valley State University is not known for its music department. But the New Music Ensemble at the small Midwestern college has impressed the critics and the composer with a new recording of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians.

Steve Reich: 'Music for 18 (Cornfed) Musicians'

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Music Lists

Reich On Reich: A Composer And His Music

WNYC Radio

December 10, 2009 • Steve Reich introduces key pieces in a 50-year career as one of America's most innovative composers. It's part of Maximum Reich, a weeklong celebration of the composer and his music on Q2, the new music stream from WQXR in New York.

Music News

Steve Reich Wins Music Pulitzer

April 20, 2009 • Reich is the first Pulitzer winner from the generation of composers who developed the style called minimalism. His Double Sextet was designed to be performed by six musicians playing against a recording of themselves. It was premiered by the eclectic ensemble Eighth Blackbird.

Hear An Excerpt Of Steve Reich's 'Double Sextet'

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Music Lists

Five Modern Classical Pieces for Pop Listeners

November 21, 2007 • In his new book The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, critic Alex Ross explores the richness of classical music created in turbulent times. Out of 100 years of music, Ross picks five classics for curious listeners.

Music

Beauty Amid the Discord: Music in the 20th Century

October 12, 2007 • From the musical buzz in pre-WWI Vienna to the experimental New York scene of the 1960s and on through today, Alex Ross reveals the story of 20th-century music in his new book The Rest Is Noise.

Beauty Amid the Discord: Music in the 20th Century

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Concerts

Minimalist Jukebox: Steve Reich

February 2, 2007 • The propulsive, rhythmic music of pioneering minimalist composer Steve Reich is represented by two major works: his Three Movements for Orchestra, which showcases the LA Philharmonic's percussion section; and Tehillim, his classic setting of Hebrew psalms, sung by Synergy Vocals.

Music

Steve Reich at 70

Fresh Air

October 6, 2006 • Minimalist composer Steve Reich, who celebrated his 70th birthday last week, is considered one of our foremost living composers. Nonesuch Records has released a new box set, Phases: A Nonesuch Retrospective, and in New York City, there will be a month-long series of dance performances, concerts, and workshops at BAM, Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center. Interviews with Reich originally aired May 11, 1999 and March 31, 1989.

Steve Reich at 70

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Review

Song Of The Day

The Thinking Man's Minimalist at 70

October 3, 2006 • For maximum effect, Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" should be heard in its entirety, in order to capture the full complement of drama, color and urgency. But to dive right in, head straight for Section 6, where the patterns are as thick, colorful and confusing an exquisitely woven Persian carpet.

Music Interviews

New York Fetes Composer Steve Reich at 70

October 1, 2006 • American composer Steve Reich turns 70 Tuesday. Reich is a pioneering minimalist, working in a style of music characterized by an almost hypnotic repetition, with subtle changes in texture.

New York Fetes Composer Steve Reich at 70

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Review

Music

So Percussion, Playing Pipes Bought for A Song

April 16, 2006 • The Brooklyn-based ensemble So Percussion improvises instruments from materials found at Home Depot and other sources associated more with plumbing supplies than with the performing arts. A distinctive sound emerges.

So Percussion, Playing Pipes Bought for A Song

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Music Interviews

Steve Reich: A Wild Compositional Ride

September 25, 2005 • Steve Reich is one of the pioneering voices of the minimalist movement in classical music. Now he's written two pieces that he says may be his best work. A CD of these pieces is being released this week.

Steve Reich: A Wild Compositional Ride

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Review

Director's Cuts

Director's Cuts: Minimalism

February 3, 2002 • Weekend Edition Sunday music director Ned Wharton offers up three new CDs of a "minimalist" tone.

Director's Cuts: Minimalism

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Real Media

Music Interviews

Minimalist Composer Steve Reich

Fresh Air

January 12, 2001 • Minimalist Composer Steve Reich on his composition Its Gonna Rain inspired by the Cuban Missle Crisis.

Minimalist Composer Steve Reich

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Real Media

Books

Alex Ross Listens to the 20th Century's 'Noise'

January 1, 2008 • In his new book, New Yorker critic Alex Ross dispels the notion of a classical music deathwatch. The Rest Is Noise explores the 20th century through the richness of its music.

Alex Ross Reads from the Book

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ACME In Concert: Steve Reich's Complete String Quartets

Members of ACME (violinists Caroline Shaw and Ben Russell, violist Nadia Sirota and cellist Clarice Jensen) dug into Steve Reich's Different Trains to open their performance, recorded live on Sept. 11, 2012. AJ Wilhelm for NPR hide caption

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AJ Wilhelm for NPR

Live in Concert

ACME In Concert: Steve Reich's Complete String Quartets

Q2

September 11, 2012 • A group of New York City contemporary music dynamos traversed three landmark works in a single evening, recorded live at New York's (Le) Poisson Rouge.

ACME In Concert: Steve Reich's Complete String Quartets

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courtesy of Nonesuch Records

First Listen

First Listen: Steve Reich, 'WTC 9/11'

September 4, 2011 • In a recent work, the New York composer crystallizes the chaos, pain and anxiety that have overshadowed the past decade.