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  Steve Reich - Electric Counterpoint
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Steve Reich has been called "...America's greatest living composer." (The Village Voice), "...the most original musical thinker of our time" (The New Yorker) and "...among the great composers of the century" (The New York Times). "There's just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them," states The Guardian (London). His instantly recognizable musical language combines propulsive rhythms and seductive instrumental color.

Considered a major pioneer of minimalism; credited as the innovator behind phasing -- a process whereby two tape loops lined up in unison gradually move out of phase with each other, ultimately coming back into sync -- his early experiments in tape manipulation also anticipated the emergence of hip-hop sampling by well over a decade. Reich was born October 3, 1936 in New York City, and later studied at Cornell University, Juilliard School of Music, and Mills College in Oakland, California under the tutelage of avant-garde composers Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud. In 1965 Steve composed the landmark “It's Gonna Rain,” a phased piece utilizing a 13-second sample of a sermon by the minister Brother Walter. Reich again applied his phasing manipulations to the recorded voice on 1966's “Come Out,” and with 1967's “Piano Phase” and “Violin Phase” he began employing the process on acoustic instruments. Inspired by a journey to Ghana, he produced “Drumming” in 1971 which was scored for four pairs of bongos, three marimbas, three glockenspiels, and voice.

Reich's subsequent work veered from quintessential minimalism (1972's self-explanatory “Clapping Music”) to orchestral compositions such as his seminal work, “Music for Eighteen Musicians.” Reich's major works finally began appearing on albums, among them 1988's brilliant “Different Trains,” a Holocaust-inspired piece created for live string quartet, pre-recorded string quartet and sampled voices. On LP it was paired with “Electric Counterpoint,” a composition for jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, which was later sampled by the UK ambient duo, the Orb on their 1991 hit "Little Fluffy Clouds." Reich's Jewish heritage continued playing a central role in his later work as well -- 1994's multi-media piece “The Cave” retold the story of the prophet Abraham and “Proverb,” a haunting vocal piece which was written in 1995.

As Reich's trailblazing work came into fashion with the wave of late-'90s electronica, the album Reich Remixed appeared in 1999, stocked with DJ remixes of his works. In 1990, Mr. Reich received a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition for “Different Trains” as recorded by the Kronos Quartet on the Nonesuch label. He won a second Grammy award in 1999 for his piece “Music for 18 Musicians,” also on Nonesuch. In 1997, the label released a 10-CD retrospective box set of Mr. Reich's compositions, featuring several newly-recorded and re-mastered works.

2006 marked Steve Reich's 70th-birthday year, with festivals and special concerts organized by companies around the world. In the composer's hometown of New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center joined forces to present complementary programs of his music, and in London, the Barbican mounted a major retrospective. Concerts were also presented in Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Budapest, Chicago, Cologne, Copenhagen, Denver, Dublin, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Paris, Porto, Vancouver, Vienna, among other cities. In addition, Nonesuch released its second box set of Steve Reich’s works, Phases: A Nonesuch Retrospective, in September 2006. The five-CD collection comprises fourteen of the composer’s best-known pieces, spanning the 20 years of his time on the label. Reich’s most recent work, “Daniel Variations” was based on the writings of disappeared journalist Daniel Pearl. The work was premiered to great critical acclaim at the Barbican in London and has subsequently been performed internationally. Mr. Reich is currently at work on “Double Sextet” for the ensemble eighth blackbird, which will be premiered in May 2008 at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall.

Reich's style of composition has influenced many other composers and musical groups, including Philip Glass (especially his early pieces), John Adams, the progressive rock band King Crimson, the new-age guitarist Michael Hedges, the art-pop and electronic musician Brian Eno, the composers associated with the Bang on a Can festival (including David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe), and numerous indie rock musicians including songwriter Sufjan Stevens and instrumental ensembles The Mercury Program, Tortoise, So Many Dynamos, Do Make Say Think and A Silver Mt. Zion. Godspeed You Black Emperor composed a song, unreleased, entitled "Steve Reich". His music has also been a source of inspiration to ambient and techno musicians. This connection has been honored in the above mentioned 1999 album, Reich Remixed, also on Nonesuch Records. His works have also found their way into TV and film, appearing in the Sopranos, Nip/Tuck, CSI, The Dying Gaul and A Home at the End of the World among many others.

In Steve's own words - "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. Arnold Schoenberg and his followers (...) create(d) 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

Steve Reich is published by Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.