Lee @ Rich Fest
 

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...80371/1031/ENT

Once you hear Steve Reich's music, you will instantly say, "Oh yes, I know that style." It's been widely imitated and featured in films and on the radio.
To hear it in the concert hall is an altogether different and better experience. Here's the list of upcoming New York performances, billed collectively as the Steve Reich@70 festival.
From 2 to 6 p.m. Oct. 15, the Whitney Museum will present its tribute in the third floor Peter Norton Family Galleries. Performers include the new music ensembles Alarm Will Sound, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, So Percussion and the Manhattan School of Music's TACTUS, as well as Ransom Wilson and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. The afternoon includes performances of "It's Gonna Rain" (1965), "Marimba Phase" (1967), "Pendulum Music" (1968), "Four Organs" (1970), "Clapping Music" (1972) and "Proverb" (1995)....

Sweet! I assume Lee is gonna set up the live performance of Pendulum Music. It would be interesting to see that one live, cause you get the visual of swinging microphones to go along with the sound phasing feedback.

Excellent.The tribute i went to yesterday with sonicl and pookie was so good, i'm still working it out in my head.Branca's new piece in tribute to Reich(Lesson No.3 for electric guitar) was breathtaking and the Kronos Quartet with the Theatre Of Voices and Philip Jeck were just incredible even though the only slight disappointment was that Jeck was hardly audible throughout the performance till the very end.Still,he managed to stop my heart for a couple of minutes with his finale.Do go to that if you get the chance because it is well worth it.

escape to new york?

I'll second what Porky has said.

The tribute at the Barbican was in four parts. The first was Maya Beiser playing "World to Come" by David Lang (of Bang on a Can) that involved her playing cello alongside a number of prerecorded cello tracks. Pretty much anything played on the cello is beautiful, but this was exceptionally so.

The second part was the Glenn Branca piece, "Lesson No 3 (for Steve Reich)", played on four guitars and drums. In a fairly Reich-ian style, it was mainly each guitarist playing a repeated motif, with them going out of phase as the piece progressed. It was only 15 minutes, but, by God, what a stunning fifteen minutes.

Next up was a performance of Reich's "Electric Counterpoint", with a solo guitarist (whose name I don't know) playing over prerecorded tracks. The piece was initially marred by technical problems, and also suffered as a result of coming straight after the power of Branca's piece, but was nevertheless good.

Finally came Gavin Bryars' piece, which was a setting of poetry to music from Kronos Quartet (string quartet, for those who don't know them). It featured a turntable intro from Philip Jeck, who carried on playing throughout, but at such low volume that it was often inaudible, and then also played the outro that Porky referred to. Another beautiful piece.

I was mildly disappointed because the pieces played were not as avant-garde as I had imagined they would be, but that didn't spoil a wonderful evening.

And it was great to see Porky and Pookie again. I also briefly met Toilet and Bowels, to whom I send apologies for not being very chatty, I was feeling a bit shy.

I found the Glenn Branca piece so breath-taking, I don't really have the words to express how good it was.

Agreed about the David Lang cello piece. The cello is such a beautiful instrument, and Maya Beiser was an incredibly beautiful woman playing it, and as a visual performance, this was an important part for me.

Electric Counterpoint was the least good piece, but then it's never been my favourite Reich composition.

And the final performance of a new Gavin Bryars piece was the most surprising. I'm not familiar with Gavin Bryars, but it was a very nice piece, can't add much on that to porky and sonicl.

Many thanks to sonicl, by the way, for driving me to London and back. It was a good day.


ditto. Plus I was generally feeling somewhat humbled by how friendly and nice porky was.

Ditto also.