EnB1/SSO/Steve Reich
Wednesday Sep. 15 – St. Petri at 21:00
STEVE REICH (US)
“Our greatest living composer” (The New York Times),
“…the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker).
“One of only a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history” (The Guardian)
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER, 2 X GRAMMY AWARD WINNER, POLAR PRIZE WINNER
COMMANDEUR DE L’ORDRE DES ARTS ET LETTRES.
Steve Reich’s music is characterized by a strong, steady pulse, short repeating melodic figures and strictly diatonic and tonal harmonies.
He is grouped together with other “first generation” minimalist composers such as Philip Glass and La Monte Young, and more recently with younger composers such as John Adams.
Reich’s combination of repetition and process creates a music full of vitality and energy!
His music fits different genres (classical, dance, jazz) and it is an honor to invite Steve Reich as Composer in Residence 2010.
Concerts:
11 Sept 2010: kl 19.00: Konserthus (opening festival)
Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, EnB1
Music by Benjamin Britten and Steve Reich
14 Sept 2010: kl 21.00 : Folken, Stavanger
UIS, jazz department
Music by Steve Reich
(Steve Reich in attendance)
15 Sept 2010: kl 21.00 : St. Petri Kirke, Stavanger
Stavanger Symphony Ensemble, EnB1
Music by Bach and Steve Reich
(Steve Reich in attendance)
Composer in Residence Festival is a collaboration between EnB1/UIS, SSO and Numusic.
Reich’s Influence and relevance on the genre of music that Numusic presents is vast, from The Orb sampling “Electric Counterpoint” for their global underground hit “Little Fluffy Clouds” in 1990, to previous Numusic acts such as Coldcut, Dj Spooky and Four Tet remixing tracks for the Reich Remixed tribute albums of 1999 and 2006.
Reich continues to be an acknowledged influence on electronic dance music across the globe, particularly within the last few years emergence of minimal techno from labels such as Kompakt.
Bang on a Can premiered Reich’s latest work, 2×5, scored for rock band set up, on July 2, 2009 at the Manchester International Festival, sharing the bill with German electronic music pioneers, Kraftwerk.
Having already hosted concerts from world-renowned pioneers of electronic music such as Arne Nordheim, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Henry, it’s an absolute honour (and long held ambition), to bring one of the worlds leading composers of rhythmic music to the festival.
Steve Reich
“All musicians in the past, starting with the middle-ages were interested in popular music. (…) Béla Bartók’s music is made entirely of sources from Hungarian folk music. And Igor Stravinsky, although he lied about it, used all kinds of Russian sources for his early ballets. Kurt Weill’s great masterpiece Dreigroschenoper is using the cabaret-style of the Weimar Republic and that’s why it is such a masterpiece. Only artificial division between popular an classical music happened unfortunately through the blindness of Arnold Schoenberg and his followers to create an artificial wall, which never existed before him. In my generation we tore the wall down and now we are back to the normal situation, for example if Brian Eno or David Bowie come to me, and if popular musicians remix my music like The Orb or DJ Spooky it is a good thing. This is a natural normal regular historical way”.
from an Interview with Jakob Buhre