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Holst-Sinfonietta / Klaus Simon STEVE REICH Eight Lines - City Life

 

EIGHT LINES

Timo Andres / Jeremy Denk / Brad Mehldau / Randy Newman I STILL PLAY

 I STILL PLAY

Erik Hall STEVE REICH Music for 18 Musicians

MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS

Valérie Milot ORBIS

The title of Valérie Milot’s seventh CD is both a nod to the circle of valued musical colleagues she has worked with over the years and a reference to the loop as a musical concept, a seemingly simple melodic or rhythmical motif that serves as both framework and source of inspiration. The disc features six complementary approaches, from John Cage’s ethereal In a Landscape to Frank Zappa’s turbulent G-Spot Tornado, not to mention the premiere of Antoine Bareil’s Castille 1382, written especially for Milot. The recording also marks her 30th birthday, which she celebrates here with some long-standing musical partners and dear friends.

STEVE REICH Pulse / Quartet

One of the great minimalists alongside Philip Glass and Terry Riley, Steve Reich remains heroically unafraid of the blank page. The 81-year-old may no longer rewrite the rules of modern composition as he did with revolutionary works such as Piano Phase, Drumming and Music for 18 Musicians, but happily continues to be inspired by younger artists. His Radio Rewrite (2012) evolved from a meeting with Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, while Pulse uses electric bass to nod to Giorgio Moroder via Daft Punk. The International Contemporary Ensemble make the wistful Pulse (premiered 2015) sing, with its spiralling, inquisitive strings, completely free of the tense nervousness of some of Reich’s more repetitive work. It’s a less complex listen than Quartet (2013), a lightly jazzy essay in key-confounding hypnosis on piano and vibraphone, written for and performed by Reich’s favourite percussionists, Colin Currie Group. (Damien Morris / The Guardian)

Sung-Soo Cho MAXIMUM | MINIMUM | MODERN

Korean pianist Sung-Soo Cho performs an intriguing recital of compositions by American composers that range from works with very progressive musical language to ones that integrate influences of folk and honky-tonk -- in other words, the full spectrum of modern American classical music. The oldest work on the program was written in 1967 and the most recent in 2015. John Corigliano, Michael Ippolito, John Adams, Lowell Liebermann, Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, and David Rakowski are all represented on this recording. These composers have a strong advocate in Sung-Soo Cho, who was awarded "Best American Contemporary Performance: at the Cincinnati World Piano Competition and "Best Performance of the Commissioned Work: at the Texas State International Piano Competition. An award winner of numerous international competitions, Cho has appeared as a soloist in Asia, the U.S., and Europe. A graduate of Seoul National University and Manhattan School of Music, he is currently pursuing his D.M.A. degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is on the faculty at Notre Dame College.

Ars Nova Copenhagen / Paul Hillier FIRST DROP

Conducted by Paul Hillier since 2003, Denmark’s Ars Nova Copenhagen has built an immovable reputation as one of the world’s most versatile and inventive vocal ensembles. First Drop is testament to that spirit; it’s a wide-ranging and ambitious project that interprets the choral work of some of the giants of contemporary classical music, including Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Louis Andriessen, Michael Gordon, David Lang and more. 

 “Almost all the works on this CD are first recordings,” Hillier explains, referring to one source of inspiration behind the title. “Ideally we wanted the idea of First Drop to remain ambiguous, but the diligent listener will sooner or later notice that it originates with Ralph Waldo Emerson.” 

Recorded over a stretch of nearly ten years, in different locations and with different configurations of singers, the performances documented here still come across as parts of a seamless whole. From the haunting strains of Michael Gordon’s “He Saw A Skull” (composed specifically for the 12 voices of Ars Nova) to Hillier’s vocal arrangement of Steve Reich’s classic “Clapping Music,” First Drop channels a vernal energy that’s unparalleled in new vocal music.

Ensemble Intercontemporain / Matthias Pintscher NEW YORK

The Ensemble intercontemporain is a contemporary music ensemble  of 31 soloists dedicated to the performance and promotion of music from the 20th and 21st centuries.
For over 30 years, this permanent ensemble of highly professional musicians has been performing a demanding repertoire of orchestral music in all its diverse forms. Under the artistic direction of Matthias Pintscher  they are united by a shared passion for new music. They accompany composers in the exploration of new musical realms, nourished by inventions (new performance and extended techniques, computer music, etc.) and encounters with other forms of artistic expression such as dance, theatre, video and visual arts. 
In residence at the Philharmonie de Paris, The Ensemble intercontemporain performs in France and abroad as a regular guest at major international festivals. The Ensemble also organizes a range of outreach activities ( educational concerts, school music workshops, master classes, etc.) serving a diversified public (conservatory students, professional and amateur musicians, general audience, etc.)

MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra / Kristjan Järvi STEVE REICH Duet

The music of Steve Reich has been heard in various venues, including electronic music dance clubs, but the full symphony orchestra treatment has been rare. That is changing, however, with the tenure of Kristjan Järvi as chief conductor of the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the result in that musically conservative, German city is this major-label double album of Reich's music, in many respects a first. Järvi's enthusiasm for the project is palpable here, most obviously in the live performance of the early Reich standard Clapping Music, which he and the composer perform together to the approval of the crowd. But to put together two CDs worth of standard orchestral music by Reich takes a little bit of doing. The first CD of the set is perhaps the more successful, containing not only Clapping Music, but two of Reich's earlier forays into orchestral repertoire, the Duet for two solo violins and string orchestra (written for Yehudi Menuhin) and The Four Sections, a sort of minimalist counterpart to Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. The "four sections" are the strings (movement 1), the percussion (movement 2), and the winds and brass (movement 3), with everyone coming together for the finale. This little work deserves the wider exposure it gets here, for it offers a unique window onto Reich's thinking on timbre in a fun, accessible way. The second CD features two works originally written for voices and small ensemble, the Daniel Variations (in memory of the murdered Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl) and You Are (a group of four settings of Hasidic aphorisms), reworked for orchestra. These are both successful examples of Reich's later style, in which Jewish themes are common, but it's not clear what the orchestra adds; in You Are, especially, the balance with the voices seems thrown off. Nevertheless, this is a major breakthrough for the octogenarian Reich, in a musically hallowed city far from his American homeland, in a place where he must find it uniquely satisfying to score a triumph. (James Manheim)

STEVE REICH Six Pianos - TERRY RILEY Keyboard Study # 1

"After the widely noticed performance at the "Acht Brücken Festival 2016" at Cologne's Philharmonic Hall, Gregor Schwellenbach, Hauschka, Erol Sarp (of „Grandbrothers“), Daniel Brandt, Paul Frick (both of "Brandt Brauer Frick") and John Kameel Farah will be releasing their interpretation of Steve Reich’s "Six Pianos" as a studio recording via FILM. The re-recording of this piece is an interpretation of Reich’s composition but still far more than just that – it is a modern approach to his idea behind it.

The basic idea came up at the beginning of the 70s at "The Baldwin Piano & Organ Company" in New York. During a rehearsal phase Steve Reich spent in this very piano store, the idea emerged of writing a composition for all the grand pianos available to him at the company. By the time of the finished piece, the actual number of pianos had settled down to six, whereof „Six Pianos” developed in 1973.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the six pianists declare their love to Steve Reich and his composition with this release. Shaped by electronic club music as well as their classical education, they form "Six Pianos" in dignified modernity and top it off with today’s sound aesthetics and technical recording possibilities.

What you will be hearing is not the recording from the „Kölner Philharmonie” (Cologne Philharmonics) but the ensemble play of six different grand pianos in six different locations, throughout Germany. Each pianist performed his part on his piano using his typical studio equipment and passed the recording over to the next one. Thus the six characteristic and individual timbres of the performers overlay to create the overall picture – „Six Pianos” the way it should be looked at in 2016. "Pianists are soloists and lone warriors by nature”, as Gregor Schwellenbach once said. But the initiator not only won over solo artists to the greatest possible extent such as Hauschka or John Kameel Farah but also musicians from "Brandt Brauer Frick" and "Grandbrothers" as well as their ensemble partners: Jan Brauer mixed "Six Pianos" in the studio while Lukas Vogel provided delays for the b-side. 

"Keyboard Study #1" by Terry Riley is a worthy b-side opposed to Reich’s composition. The piece is kind of a building set of ever lengthening, repetitive patterns played against each other with the right and left hand displaced. The composition proposes various possible combinations for the performer to choose from and repeat at will. And what the performers have chosen proves Gregor Schwellenbach’s assumption: "Especially Terry Riley’s and Steve Reich’s music are open doors for pianists socialized by pop music and their audience."

STEVE REICH The ECM Recordings

Steve Reich has been described by The Guardian as one of “a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history" and as “the greatest musical thinker of our time” by The New Yorker. Reich celebrates his 80th birthday on October 3, and The ECM Recordings brings together the landmark albums Music for 18 Musicians, Music for a Large Ensemble/Violin Phase and Tehillim in a limited edition set to mark the occasion. Originally released in 1978, 1980 and 1982, each of these recordings had a decisive influence which continues to reverberate across musical idioms.
The 3-CD box set includes a 44-page booklet with original liner notes by Steve Reich, a new essay by Paul Griffiths, and session photography by Deborah Feingold and Barbara Klemm. (ECM Records)

MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra / Kristjan Järvi STEVE REICH Duet

A new double album, honouring the 80th Birthday of the minimal music pioneer. Includes 2 world premiere recordings. Steve Reich, one of the most influential composers of our time and key founder of the minimalist school of music, is celebrating his 80th birthday on 3 October 2016. The album is not only a celebration of his birthday but also a result of a 3-year-project that started with Reich's residency as "composer in residence" at the MDR Radio Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra-choirs versions of "Daniel" and "You Are Variations" are therefore world premiere recordings. "Duet" was dedicated to and written for Sir Yehudi Menuhin for his 80th birthday. "Clapping Music" is performed on this album by Steve Reich himself and Kristjan Järvi. CD 1 includes Live performances at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig / CD 2 includes studio recordings. (Presto Classical)

Daniel Hope MY TRIBUTE TO YEHUDI MENUHIN

Yehudi Menuhin is the reason I became a violinist. As he used to say, I fell into his lap as a baby of two.

For my parents, life in 1970s South Africa had become intolerable, marked as it was by that tragedy mingled with farce, so characteristic of the appalling apartheid regime. We lived in Durban, where my father co-founded the literary magazine Bolt, publishing poems by writers of many races. From that moment on, his phone was tapped and my parents were placed under permanent surveillance. They had no option but to leave the country, but my father was only offered a so-called exit permit. This meant you could leave but never return.

My parents settled in London, where very soon their money ran out. We had nowhere to go.

At the eleventh hour, facing a calamity, we had some incredible luck: an employment agency offered my mother a compelling choice of jobs: secretary to either the Archbishop of Canterbury or to the violinist, Yehudi Menuhin. She chose Menuhin, and their association lasted 24 years until his death.

Our life changed immediately and forever. For the next years, I grew up in Menuhin’s house in Highgate, London, where my mother would take me every day to play, while she worked. Menuhin was a wonderfully spontaneous man. He’d leave his Guarneri del Gesù in an open violin case on the table, he never put it away. He picked it up and played it, almost as if he were drinking a glass of water. He once told me: “One has to play every day. One is like a bird, and can you imagine a bird saying ‘I’m tired today, I don’t feel like flying’?” The violin was a part of him. To this day, his sound remains in my ear, so unique and so fascinatingly beautiful.

Where does one even begin to summarize a unique career spanning seventy-five years by one of the greatest musicians in history? Perhaps Menuhin’s debut in 1924 in San Francisco at the age of seven; or his debut in Berlin in 1929, after which Albert Einstein exclaimed “Now I know there is a God in heaven!” Or his performance and legendary recording of the Elgar concerto under the composer’s baton in 1932; perhaps his visit to the liberated concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen with the composer Benjamin Britten in 1945; or his highly controversial decision to return to Germany in 1947 and to perform with Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic, the first Jewish artist after the war to do so. Only seven of Menuhin’s 82 years were not spent on the road.

Early on in my life, I had the chance to study and perform some of Bartok’s Duos with Menuhin. It was an incredible experience for me, and an introduction to Bartok’s extraordinary music. Many years later, with Menuhin in his role as conductor, we performed over 60 concerts around the world, including almost all of the standard violin concerti, as well as several contemporary works.

These included Mendelssohn’s early D minor Concerto, which he famously discovered in 1951, and also many works for two violins, such as the A minor Double Concerto by Vivaldi.

On 7th March 1999, I played Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto in Düsseldorf, conducted by Lord Menuhin. It was to be Yehudi’s final concert. After the Schnittke, Menuhin encouraged me to play an encore. I spontaneously chose Kaddish, Ravel’s musical version of the Jewish prayer for the dead. I had grown up on Menuhin’s interpretation of this work and wanted to dedicate it to him. Menuhin pushed me out onto the stage and sat amongst the orchestra listening to it. Perhaps it may have been in some way prophetic. Five days later, he passed away.

There’s hardly a passage in all of these great works where I don’t stop for a minute and think of Menuhin.

Yehudi called himself my “musical grandfather”. Now, in celebration of what would have been his centenary, my friends and I can finally pay our respects to this great man, in a manner I feel certain he would have loved. (Daniel Hope)

Los Angeles Master Chorale / Grant Gershon / Maya Beiser STEVE REICH You Are ( Variations)

Urban activity: buses moving; keypads clicking; bikers cutting off cabs; window washers scaling up a half completed skyscraper; the distant wail of an ambulance siren, and its sudden pitch modulation as it zooms past, carrying a rush of wind and a trail of receipts, wrappers, or the rare leaf; the clang of the subway; cash registers opening, closing, opening; everyone is counting something: time, money, appointments, each other; the whistle of a traffic cop and hundreds of half-heard conversations in the street. The flurry of the city isn't something best described as "beautiful" so much as alive, unstoppable, cruel, and complex.

American composer (and native New Yorker) Steve Reich has been writing the definitive city soundtrack for 40 years. From his early tape pieces "Come Out" and "It's Gonna Rain", to his now classic minimalist works-- though Reich would certainly scoff at the term-- Drumming and Music For 18 Musicians, to more recent works bother greater in scope and somehow conventionally attractive (Tehillim, Different Trains, The Desert Music), he's invented a sound that nails both the intricate detail and speed-ridden blur of some abstract "downtown." Where Philip Glass's music from the 1960s and 70s is vaguely futuristic and precise, Reich's is warm. Where Terry Riley, who never felt a particularly strong allegiance to the minimal aesthetic in the first place, is boundless and organic, Reich is brainy, propulsive, and hardened to the interiors of a metallic landscape. I read someone call him the "greatest living American composer," and though any all-encompassing title is debatable, you'd be hard pressed to find a more fitting example of individualism and stubborn will so often identified with this place.

You Are (Variations). is Reich's first CD of new material since the not altogether warmly received Three Tales (2002). If the composer has suffered complaints from critics of lacking ambition in recent years, he hasn't let that affect his writing: You Are is prime Reich, using choral and orchestral elements similarly to older pieces like Tehillim and The Desert Music, but seeming as rhythmically driven as anything he's done in years. Harmonically, he sticks to majors and relative minors (that is, a minor key that utilizes the same notes as a major one, but starts from a different point in the scale)-- a common Reich device-- thereby blurring the line between different tonalities. He uses a choir to impart text translated from Hasidic mystical verse: "You are wherever your thoughts are", "Explanations come to an end somewhere," and the idea of saying "little and do much". Words are repeated and spread out over great lengths, so the end effect is not one of narrative but of words as purely musical ingredients.

The "variations" in You Are take up most of the CD, but the closing track is Reich's Cello Counterpoint, featuring cellist Maya Beiser (Bang On a Can) overdubbed eight times to create a surprisingly dense string ensemble. As Reich points out in the CD insert, the cello is great because its capable of resonating clearly in a very wide range-- this piece was actually written for a full string octet, but its marked accents and interweaving melodies sound great all performed by one person. There is a slight similarity to Different Trains for string quartet, though Cello Counterpoint is nowhere near as "industrial," sounding more conventional, perhaps less confrontational, yet still unmistakably Reich. As with the You Are tracks, the constant rumble of motion fills up whatever mental space I have to drift away from the music. (Dominique Leone)

Anthony de Mare LIAISONS Re-Imagining SONDHEIM From The Piano

Conceived by acclaimed concert pianist Anthony de Mare, LIAISONS is a landmark commissioning and concert project based on the songs of legendary musical theater composer Stephen Sondheim. The Project invited 36 of the world’s foremost contemporary composers to choose a song by Sondheim and re-imagine it as a solo piano piece.
Both an homage and a celebration, LIAISONS makes the case for Sondheim as one of the 20th century's most influential composers - as at home in the concert hall as on the Broadway stage. It is also an expression of de Mare’s versatility and renowned commitment to contemporary composers: the Project’s roster spans the worlds of classical, jazz, opera, pop, musical theater and film. Composers hail from seven different countries and range in age from 30 to 75, representing more than 34 Pulitzers, Grammys, Tonys and Academy Awards.

 Since 2011 de Mare has performed over 30 different LIAISONS concerts to full houses across the U.S. and Canada, including San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago and Minneapolis among others. The first 32 pieces received their New York premieres over a series of two sold-out concerts at Symphony Space in 2012 and 2013, which also featured special onstage interviews of Mr. Sondheim by Mark Horowitz.
This fall, in celebration of the release of LIAISONS on the prestigious ECM New Series label, de Mare will play the entire collection across a three-concert series at Birdland, the Sheen Center and Symphony Space, where the project will come full circle with the final four NY premieres. We hope you will join us!

“To hear composers take my work and take it seriously... it’s a thrill.”
– Stephen Sondheim

Mahan Esfahani TIME PRESENT AND TIME PAST

If you buy only one record of harpsichord music in your life . . . buy this sensational album. The 30-year-old Iranian-American Mahan Esfahani has been making waves among connoisseurs for several years. Now he emerges as a superstar whose musicianship, imagination, virtuosity, cultural breadth and charisma far transcends the ivory tower in which the harpsichord has traditionally been placed . . . Where necessary, Esfahani is brilliantly accompanied by Concerto Köln. Even their final performance -- of JS Bach¿s Vivaldi-inspired harpsichord concerto in D Minor, with its plangently lyrical slow movement -- has a delicious twist. In the last movement Esfahani inserts a flamboyant cadenza by Brahms, of all people. A truly magical mash-up of times past, present and future.

(Record Review / Richard Morrison, The Times (London) / 08. May 2015)

Aisha Orazbayeva THE HAND GALLERY

As time passes, achieving true originality and distinction in the field of music becomes an increasingly difficult task as musical boundaries become eroded, genres overlap and merge and techniques grow ever more experimental. Finding space to genuinely stand out is something that evades many artists.

Yet, it is something that Kazakh violinist Aisha Orazbayeva has shown is still possible. Her name may not be particularly well known outside the circles of contemporary classical music but her career to date has seen her accumulate a range of impressive achievements. She’s performed at some of the world’s most acclaimed classical and experimental venues (Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Cafe OTO), worked with some of the most respected composers of modern, leftfield classical music (Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Helmut Lachenmann and Pierre Boulez) and is also a co-director of the London Contemporary Music Festival (which this year focuses on the works of pioneering electroacoustic composer Bernard Parmegiani).

She has a refreshingly relaxed approach to and view of music, having spoken of her distrust of musical categorisation and stylistic segregation, something noticeable on The Hand Gallery. Her debut album Outside set the bar high, incorporating traditional classical repertoire such as Ravel’s Violin Sonata in G Minor, alongside more defiantly avant-garde material such as Salvatore Sciarrino‘s Six Caprices and a collaboration with electronic musician Peter Zinovieff. Her second album The Hand Gallery is released on PRAH Recordings, the experimental offshoot set up by Moshi Moshi’s Stephen Bass, and sees her maintain an uncompromising and radical direction.

Much of the music on The Hand Gallery will undoubtedly be a challenge to the unaccustomed, causal listener. Her version of Violin Phase by Steve Reich has a discipline and rigidity while she plays For Aaron Copland by Morton Feldman with a lamenting faithfulness. A second piece dedicated to Aaron Copland follows later, the hushed, minimal caresses of the strings here evoking distant winds.

It is possibly the two tracks that feature her vocals that surprise the most. Her interpretation of Harbour Lights by Elvis Presley reveals her voice to be soft and gentle alongside the comparative austerity of much of the sound derived from her instrument. Here, the plucked violin conveys sounds from a different era in a similar way to that of someone like Josephine Foster. Later, her cover of John Cale’s Baby You Know has a sharp sensuousness to it and the album is closed by a version of the same track arranged for solo violin, arguably the most accessible and successful moment on The Hand Gallery.

Two Sounds Two and Aloise meanwhile offer the two of the more defiantly avant-garde moments of the album, the former unearthing strange, unsettling timbres and emissions from deep inside the body of the instrument while the latter striking a far more inflammatory, destructive tone, recalling last year’s similarly visceral Ghil 3 by Korean cellist Okkyung Lee.

The Hand Gallery shows Orazbayeva to be a musician deeply immersed in her instrument, striving for newness and musical freedom. For those who like their music to operate at the outer limits and be served with moments of enjoyable difficulty, it will be viewed as a fearless and innovative piece of work.

STEVE REICH Music for 18 Musicians

Music for 18 Musicians is approximately 55 minutes long. The first sketches were made for it in May 1974 and it was completed in March 1976. Although its steady pulse and rhythmic energy relate to many of my earlier works, its instrumentation, structure and harmony are new. 

As to instrumentation, Music for 18 Musicians is new in the number and distribution of instruments: violin, cello, 2 clarinets doubling bass clarinet, 4 women's voices, 4 pianos, 3 marimbas, 2 xylophones and metallophone (vibraphone with no motor). All instruments are acoustical. The use of electronics is limited to microphones for voices and some of the instruments. 

There is more harmonic movement in the first 5 minutes of Music for 18 Musicians than in any other complete work of mine to date. Though the movement from chord to chord is often just a re-voicing, inversion or relative minor or major of a previous chord, usually staying within the key signature of three shapes at all times, nevertheless, within these limits harmonic movement plays a more important role in this piece than in any other I have written.
Rhythmically, there are two basically different kinds of time occurring simultaneously in Music for 18 Musicians. The first is that of a regular rhythmic pulse in the pianos and mallet instruments that continues throughout the piece. The second is the rhythm of the human breath in the voices and wind instruments. The entire opening and closing sections plus part of all sections in between contain pulses by the voice and winds. They take a full breath and sing or play pulses of particular notes for as long as their breath will comfortably sustain them. The breath is the measure of the duration of their pulsing. This combination of one breath after another gradually washing up like waves against the constant rhythm of the pianos and mallet instruments is something I have not heard before and would like to investigate further.
The structure of Music for 18 Musicians is based on a cycle of eleven chords played at the very beginning of the piece and repeated at the end. All the instruments and voices play or sing the pulsating notes with each chord. Instruments like the strings which to not have to breath nevertheless follow the rise and fall of the breath by following the breathing patterns of the bass clarinet. Each chord is held for the duration of two breaths, and the next chord is gradually introduced, and so on, until all eleven are played and the ensemble returns to the first chord. The first pulsing chord is then maintained by two pianos and two marimbas. While this pulsing chord is held for about five minutes a small piece is constructed on it. When this piece is completed there is a sudden change to the second chord, and a second small piece or section is constructed. This means that each chord that might have taken fifteen or twenty seconds to play in the opening section is then stretched out as the basic pulsing melody for a five minute piece very much as a single note in a cantus firmus, or chant melody of a 12th century Organum by Perotin might be stretched out for several minutes as the harmonic centre for a section of the Organum. The opening eleven chord cycle of Music for 18 Musicians is a kind of pulsing cantus for the entire piece.
On each pulsing chord one or, on the third chord, two small pieces are built. These pieces or sections are basically either in form of an arch (ABCDCBA), or in the form of a musical process, like that of substituting beats for rests, working itself out from beginning to end. Elements appearing in one section will appear in another but surrounded by different harmony and instrumentation. For instance the pulse in pianos and marimbas in sections 1 and 2 changes to marimbas and xylophones in section 3A, and to xylophones and maracas in sections 6 and 7. The low piano pulsing harmonies of section 3A reappear in section 6 supporting a different melody played by different instruments. The process of building up a canon, or phase relation, between two xylophones and two pianos which first occurs in section 2, occurs again in section 9 but building up to another overall pattern in a different harmonic context. The relationship between the different sections is thus best understood in terms of resemblances between members of a family. Certain characteristics will be shared, but others will be unique.
Changes from one section to the next, as well as changes within each section are cued by the metallophone (vibraphone with no motor) whose patterns are played once only to call for movements to the next bar, much as in Balinese Gamelan a drummer will audibly call for changes of pattern in West African Music. This is in contrast to the visual nods of the head used in earlier pieces of mine to call for changes and in contrast also to the general Western practice of having a non-performing conductor for large ensembles. Audible cures become part of the music and allow the musicians to keep listening. (Steve Reich)