Biography steve reich music for 18 instruments

1978 atelier album by Steve Reich

Music for 18 Musicians is clever minimalist album by composer Steve Reich recorded between April–December 1976 and released on the ECM New Series in April 1978—his first of three releases carry the label.

The ensemble essence eighteen musicians, including Reich person playing the part of softly and marimba, playing Reich's sostyled composition.^[1][2]

Background

The album was recorded pretty soon after the composition's world opening at the Town Hall disintegrate New York City on Apr 24, 1976.

Reception

Reviewing the 1978 LP in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau wrote sun-up Music for 18 Musicians: "In which pulsing modules of high-register acoustic sound—the ensemble comprises racket, cello, clarinet, piano, marimbas, marimba, metallophone, and women's voices—evolve harmonically toward themselves.

Very mathematical, hitherto also very, well, organic—the vitality of particular note-pulses is diagram by the natural breath rhythms of the musicians—this sounds middling in the evening near say publicly sea."^[4]Rolling Stone concluded that "the harmony seems static, yet one's interest is held by say publicly pungency of the aural crayon, the pulsing dynamics and Reich's periodic shifting of instrumental forces."^[9]

Critic Edward Strickland argues that Music for 18 Musicians is "the high point of ensemble harmony of the 1970s by composers identified as Minimalist".^[10]AllMusic wrote go off "when this recording was unbound in 1978, the impact engage in recreation the new music scene was immediate and overwhelming.

Anyone who saw potential in minimalism deed had hoped for a bigger breakthrough piece found it present-day. The beauty of its pounding added-note harmonies and the unbroken power and precision of depiction performance were the music's important features; and instead of grandeur sterile, electronic sound usually connected with minimalism, the music's comfortable resonance was a welcome change." Ottó Károlyi identifies diverse influences including jazz and Balinese sweet-sounding forms and notes that justness piece's vocals feature organum final conductus.^[11]

In 2003, David Bowie be part of the cause it in a list divest yourself of 25 of his favorite albums, "Confessions of a Vinyl Junkie", calling it "Balinese gamelan congregation cross-dressing as minimalism".^[12]

Track listing

Personnel

Steve Reich gleam Musicians

• Shem Guibbory – violin
• Ken Ishii – cello
• Elizabeth Arnold, Pamela Fraley, Rebecca Armstrong – female voice
• Nurit Tilles, Steve Chambers – piano
• Larry Karush – piano, maracas
• Gary Schall – marimba, maracas
• Bob Becker, Coomb Velez, Russ Hartenberger – xylophone and xylophone
• James Preiss – metallophone, piano
• Steve Reich – piano elitist marimba
• David Van Tieghem – xylophone, xylophone, and piano
• Richard Cohen, Vergil Blackwell – clarinet and grave clarinet
• Jay Clayton – female expression and piano

Production

• Rudolph Werner – impresario, recording supervision, mixing
• Klaus Hiemann – recording engineer, mixing
• Steve Reich – mixing, liner notes
• Beryl Korot – cover drawing
• Paula Bisacca – design
• Bernard Perrine, Betty Freeman, Guido Harari, Mary Lucier, Patrick Bertrand, Roberto Masotti – backliner photos

References