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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.
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