Browse by Artist: REICH, STEVE

Artist:	REICH, STEVE
Title:	Music For Mallet Instruments Voices & Organ
Label:	HUNGAROTON (HUNGARY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HUNG 31358CD

1995 release. Includes the pieces "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ" (1973), "Music for Pieces of Wood" (1973) & "Sextet" (1985). Performed by Amadinda Percussion Group (Károly Bojtos, Zoltan Rácz, Zsolt Sárkány, Zoltán Váczi); Ágnes Dobszay, Erzsébet Hajdu, Zsuzsanna Lukin (voices); Aurél Holló, Tibor Nemes, Balázs Papp, Benedek Tóth (mallet instruments); Béla Faragó (electric organ); Barnabás Dukay (claves); Károly Binder, György Oravecz (piano, synthesizers).

Artist:	REICH, STEVE
Title:	Music For 18 Musicians
Label:	HUNGAROTON (HUNGARY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HUNG 32208CD

Peformed by Amadinda Percussion Group and Musicians, recorded live in Budapest, 1990. "For the most part I have no interest in 'live' recordings. My ensemble has made many of them over the years for various European Radio stations and I never listen to them. (Perhaps I should.) Whenever my ensemble records we have always recorded in a multi-track studio. However, once in a great while, a fine recording is made of a miraculous concert -- and this is what we have on this CD. Studio enhancements are replaced by a magic performance. The performance is so astoundingly good and played with such amazing energy, that one is simply swept along." -- Steve Reich. July2003.

Artist:	REICH, STEVE
Title:	Music For 18 Musicians
Label:	INNOVA
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	INNO 678CD

"1970s downtown New York City and Steve Reich's brand of minimalism are inextricably linked. That is all about to change. His era-defining opus, 'Music for 18 Musicians,' one of his most enduringly popular works with its creamy orchestration and trippy patterns, has found new roots in the heartland. A band of regular Michigan students and volunteers led by Bill Ryan has devoted the last year to perfecting it; in the process, turning it into something of a lifestyle. This hybrid SACD/CD audiophile, surround recording captures every phrase of the work, as though you were hearing it for the first time in your life, farm-fresh. Engineered by Silas Brown on location at Grand Rapids' Victorian temple to great music, the St. Cecilia's Music Center, the work seems newly-minted for the 21st century. Walking around Allendale, Michigan, home of the ensemble, where the land is flat, where one can see for miles and miles and miles, and where this view sometimes seems infinite, the music seems written for the location. The piece is huge, monolithic, yet unencumbered by its hour-long frame, by its huge staff of players and interlocking rhythms and melodies. It stretches long and far and encourages deep breathing and space, as does the home of this recording: The Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble performs 'Music for 18 Musicians' with a spirit and abandon befitting the passion of its composer, inspired by the commitment and experience of its leader, and with the exuberance and vision of its youth. With performances lauded by The New York Times and Bang On a Can marathoners, we now invite you to discover this ensemble, and to rediscover this extraordinary work in its 100% organic glory."

Artist:	REICH, STEVE
Title:	Four Organs/Phase Patterns
Label:	NEW TONE (ITALY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	NT 5018CD

1990 CD reissue of this classic album, originally issued by the Shandar label, 1971. A core set of Minimalism icons, these 2 works are as significant as significant gets. These are the original and best recordings (there are a few others, none terrible, but you wouldn't want to start out with Bang On a Can's versions, please!). Listed as #4 on Alan Lichts' "Minimal Top Ten". "This is an important and peculiar recording. Important because it is the first available recording of a live performance of Steve Reich's music played by real musicians and moreover by an ensemble. Up to then his main work 'It's Gonna Rain' and 'Come Out' for magnetic tape and the various 'phase' (violin phase, piano phase, reed phase) for solo/duo instruments. Performed by Reich, Philip Glass (today very well-known American composer) on keyboard, Jon Gibson, composer and saxophone player with the P. Glass Ensemble, on keyboard and maracas, Art Murphy, keyboard, also with P. Glass Ensemble during the '70s, and Steve Chambers, composer and keyboardist, first with the P. Glass Ensemble, then in solo. Peculiar recording both for the instrumentation: electric organs and for the music. Reich has used very rarely electric instruments in his music. The choice of four electric organs, here, gives a 'strange' sound to the music, very different from other pieces of the same composer. At a superficial level it resembles very much of certain recordings of Philip Glass in the seventies. In 'Four Organs' (and maracas) it is presented, for the first time, the 'slow motion music': the basic chord becomes longer and longer, resembling the movement of the pendulum that slowly reaches the quietness, the same for the composition that at the end acquires the ecstatic quality of Indian mantras. 'Phase Patterns', as from the title, is based on the phasing process, here more complicated by the presence of four performers and anticipating the results of the following Reich masterpiece, 'Drumming'."

Artist:	REICH, STEVE
Title:	Steve Reich and Musicians, Live 1977 - Kitchen Archives
Label:	ORANGE MOUNTAIN
Format:	CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	OMM 018CD

"Steve Reich, one of the foremost composers of our time and an important 'first generation' minimalist composer has performed at The Kitchen Center for the Arts many times during his career. The Kitchen, an interdisciplinary organization known for its commitment to experimental work, has an archive of audio and video recordings that cover its three-decade existence. Orange Mountain Music in collaboration with The Kitchen's curators has found several wonderful recordings and among them are these made by Steve Reich and Musicians, Live 1977. This is the second disc in this exciting new series from Orange Mountain Music."

Artist:	REICH, STEVE
Title:	Phase Patterns
Label:	WERGO (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$24.00
Catalog #:	WER 6630

"Contemporary recordings (1997-98) of these seminal live-instrument-hocket works, recorded by the Leipzig Ensemble Avant Garde (Michael Obst, Stefan Sopora, Klaus Steffes-Holländer, Josef Christof) under the direction of noted 20c repertoire pianist Stefen Schleiermacher. Any new recording of classic Reich is reason alone for rejoice; here we've not only gotten full-bandwidth recordings (and bang-up performances) of the under recorded (at least in the last 20 years or so) 'Piano Phase' (1966, for two pianos), 'Phase Patterns' (1970, for four electric organs) and 'Four Organs' (1970, for four electric organs and maracas) (with an average time of 17 minutes each), but THREE separate takes of 'Pendulum Music' (1968, for microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers and performers). Nifty new design for Wergo (w/fonts nicked out of the DR oeuvre) to boot. Completely necessary." --Hrvatski

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