#Steve Reich Composer

[mahgnib]

Happy 88th birthday, pioneering minimalist composer Steve Reich.

[featherfurl]

Testing midi to golgi notation conversion and basic polyphasic functions with golgi.

[gadunkie]

ochestral music is so cool its too bad that a rampant number of very racist people claim it as their own via associating it with "clean" music

[macguffinman]

Heavily inspired by Steve Reich's 'Different Trains', I decided to compose a tribute to William Hartnell's incarnation as the Doctor. After choosing several recordings of dialogue, the music (melodies and chords) in each phrase is built out of the musical tones from Hartnell's performance. When deciding upon which snippets of dialogue to use, I was drawn to Hartnell's many 'fluffs'. Back in the days of recording television, it wasn't an easy task to rerecord or edit out wrong dialogue (it was usually treated the same as live theatre), so any errors were just left in the final cut. This was made more difficult for Hartnell as he suffered from undiagnosed arteriosclerosis - making it difficult for him to remember his lines and caused lapses in concentration.What I admire is how the Doctor Who fandom have incorporated these fluffs as part of the characterisation of the Doctor. My favourite in particular is due to the first incarnation wearing out his body too much, caused more severely by the time destructor (see The Daleks' Master Plan).Hence, not only is this piece a tribute to my love of the show, but also to the actor William Hartnell, who, despite his failing health, became one of the most important components to the show. He helped establish the first principles, fluffs and all, to a character that is universally beloved.The quotes have come from the following episodes: "The Daleks", "The Edge of Destruction", "The Keys of Marinus", "The Sensorites", "The Web Planet", "The Chase", "The War Machines" and "The Three Doctors".

[echodrone]

Hey folks, here’s a little teaser of our new album, Music for 6 Musicians! It’s a single, 39-minute through-composed piece. One album. One song. Six musicians. A continuous journey in sound.

More updates soon, friends!

[hellocanticle]

Oh Say Can You “C”? Terry Riley’s “In C” Turns 60 Years Old

Terry Riley with a t-shirt displaying the entire score of “In C” (photo from Facebook, copyright unknown) November 4th, 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the premiere of Terry Riley’s seminal masterpiece, “In C”. After having completed a variety of respectable compositional efforts, Terry Riley (1935- ) was jolted by the Muse to write this defining work that charted a path very different from…

[graph100]

yall i seriously love steve reich

[nonesuchrecords]

Steve Reich’s conversation with BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week received an encore broadcast as part of the show’s 80th anniversary celebrations. He shares the personal story behind his seminal 1988 piece Different Trains. The 1989 Nonesuch recording of the piece, performed by Kronos Quartet, won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition and is among the 200 Best Albums of the 1980s per Pitchfork. You can hear the episode, which also features Meredith Monk, here.

[transgenderer]

i listened to glass' akhnaten today, while working. glass kind of just has the one main trick but its so compelling it works for hours on end. and its stuck in my head all day. obviously he's one of the most influential composers of the 20th century but i think its still possible he's underrated e.g. i was kind of lumping him with steve reich in my mind recently and reich is great but glass is in another league

[caviarsonoro]

GoGo Penguin - Hopopono (Official Video) [Gondwana Records]

"Hopopono" is a track that encapsulates the essence of GoGo Penguin's distinctive sound—a British trio that has redefined the boundaries of contemporary jazz by blending it with electronic and minimalist influences. This track, taken from their album v2.0, presents itself as a hypnotic and emotionally resonant sonic experience, brimming with dynamism and precision.

At the core of the piece lies the impeccable interaction between the three members of the trio. Chris Illingworth, on piano, develops cyclical melodic patterns that balance simplicity with depth. His performance is precise and evocative, acting as the backbone of the piece. Nick Blacka, on double bass, provides a rich and pulsing rhythmic foundation, often taking on a melodic role of its own, creating a fascinating dialogue with the piano. Meanwhile, Rob Turner, on drums, delivers an almost electronic approach, with rhythms reminiscent of glitch and breakbeat, giving the track a uniquely contemporary energy.

"Hopopono" stands out for its progressive structure. As it unfolds, the track grows in intensity without ever losing its meditative character. The minimalist elements of repetition and gradual variation evoke the music of composers like Steve Reich, while the rhythmic energy and precision recall electronic artists such as Aphex Twin. This balance between the organic and the digital is one of the trio's greatest achievements and is brilliantly showcased in this piece.

The atmosphere of "Hopopono" is both introspective and vibrant. The combination of textures creates a sense of constant motion, like a river flowing uninterruptedly, inviting the listener to immerse themselves in its layers. It is a track that is not only heard but experienced, connecting with emotions and challenging the expectations of traditional jazz.

[grrl-beetle]

Steve Reich on Composing "Drumming"

[burlveneer-music]

l'Oumigmag - Ce Qui Tourne Dans L'Air - from Montreal, Sébastien Sauvageau's "contemporary jazz, post-minimalism and ambient electronica" group, on Nik Bärtsch's Ronin Rhythm Records

What floats, what constellates, what exhales... what spins in the air Today, there are a growing number of experiments in the successful blending of written or improvised creative music with traditional music, but none of them has this singular character. « Ce qui tourne dans l'air », to use the title of this offering, turns out quite differently. Québec musician Sébastien Sauvageau is indeed very inspired by the integration of the folkloric legacy in French-speaking America, and by global advances in the territories he has been exploring since his professional beginnings at the helm of l'Oumigmag: contemporary jazz, post-minimalism and ambient electronica. Thus, the rhythmic patterns proposed here integrate the concepts of rhythmic shift, typical of American minimalism (particularly those developed by Steve Reich) and give them a fluid swing that brings us back to a jazz aesthetic wrapped in ambient. It should come as no surprise that this opus is included in the repertoire of a label promoted by Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch, whose aesthetic has left its mark on North American minds, starting with those of Sébastien Sauvageau and his colleagues at l'Oumigmag. Each track on the album draws from traditional fiddle repertoire: Ce qui tourne dans l’air — Based on Le Capitaine from the repertoire of Harry Poitras (Baie Sainte-Catherine, Quebec) Ce qui persiste — Based on Rodrick’s Reel from the repertoire of Lawrence "Teddy Boy" Houle, a Métis fiddler from Ebb and Flow, Manitoba Ce qui surgit — Based on Le Reel de St-Michel, collected by accordionist Philippe Jetté in Saint-Côme, Québec Ce qui constelle — Based on Les Marionnettes, a composition by American fiddler Lisa Ornstein Ce qui s’écoule — Based on a traditional 6/8 tune from Newfoundland Sébastien Sauvageau: guitar·synths·electronics·voice Dâvi Simard: fiddle·foot percussion Alex Dodier: sax·bass clarinet·synths Stéphane Diamantakiou: double bass·electric bass·synth bass Sam Joly: drums·synths Erika Angell: voice on Ce qui tourne dans l’air

[justforbooks]

Richard Serra, who has died aged 85, was a remarkable cultural figure – a sculptor who belonged to the generation of American minimalists, was associated with process art and made experimental films, yet evoked something of an earlier, more heroic age. The critic Robert Hughes described him as “the last abstract expressionist”.

Although this statement stretches the point, Serra’s interest in the processes of sculpture led him to some extravagant gestural acts that belie the severity of his grand public commissions. Weight and Measure, made in the early 1990s for what is now Tate Britain, exemplified his austere side, with its massive steel forms designed to counter the building’s overbearing classicism. However, some of his other works, such as the twisting, “torqued” structures installed at the Guggenheim in Bilbao in 2005, are positively baroque.

Curled around an existing sculpture, Snake, that was commissioned for the museum’s opening in 1997, these steel works, dominated by ellipses and spirals, articulate spaces in which the gallery visitor can wander. They are monumental enough to take on Frank Gehry’s grandiose architecture, but, with their patinated surfaces and curved forms, also have an intimate, sensual quality. Above all, Serra’s sculptures create a remarkable interaction with the public and a strong experience of gradual discovery – hence the installation’s title, The Matter of Time.

His works have proved popular with curators, but are not confined to museums. They have appeared in settings as diverse as the Tuileries garden in Paris, the Federal Plaza in New York, and the Qatari desert, attracting responses from intense admiration to a public inquiry. One of his sculptures, Fulcrum, was put up in 1987 at Broadgate outside Liverpool Street station in London. It manages to combine monumentality with fragility, made of weathered steel plates that appear to support each other precariously.

He was born in San Francisco into a family that provided a foundation for his later career as a sculptor in metal. His father, Tony, who was from Majorca, was a pipe-fitter in a naval shipyard. His mother, Gladys (nee Fineberg), who was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Odessa, used to introduce her son as “Richard, the artist” and was, later, touchingly enthusiastic when he began to make his way in New York. Serra himself laboured in steel mills during his time as a student and subsequently, in 1979, made a compelling film, Steelmill/Stahlwerk, about German workers in the industry.

Serra began his studies in 1957 at the University of California in Berkeley, graduating from the institution’s Santa Barbara campus with a degree in English literature. He followed this in 1961 with a three-year course in painting at Yale University, New Haven – a period in which he also worked as a teaching assistant and as a proof-reader for Joseph Albers’s book Interaction of Color (1963). At Yale he encountered such luminaries as Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt and Frank Stella, before winning a fellowship that took him to Europe in 1964.

In Paris, Serra was profoundly impressed by the sculpture of Constantin Brâncuși, but in Florence the following year he continued to paint, producing coloured grids in timed conditions controlled by a stopwatch. It was only with his first exhibition, at the Galleria La Salita in Rome in 1966, that he made a definitive move away from painting, filling cages with live and stuffed animals.

After moving to New York in the same year, Serra initially survived by setting himself up as a furniture remover, together with his friends, the composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Serra’s artistic development at this time was rapid, moving from experiments with rubber, fibreglass and neon tubing to the metal sculpture for which he became renowned. He soon began his long-term association with the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, in whose Warehouse annex he was photographed in 1969 throwing molten lead at the wall with a ladle.

In the same year Serra refined this procedure by splashing the metal against a small steel plate stuck into the corner of Jasper Johns’s studio. The “castings” produced when the lead cooled down were rough, expressive forms, but this project also inspired Serra to create more impersonal pieces, in which metal sheets were wedged into the angles of rooms, leaned against each other or pinned to the wall by lead pipes. His emphasis on objective phenomena – mass, gravity and other physical forces – can also be seen in his remarkable experimental films.

In Hand Catching Lead (1968), the hand is in fact the artist’s but it is shown disembodied, trying to grasp rather than cast pieces of falling lead, which it drops or misses altogether. The repetition of this fundamentally pointless act gives the film a serial quality, akin to the celluloid process itself.

Serra’s engagement with the cutting edge also led him to work with the land artists Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt. In 1970 he assisted them with Spiral Jetty at the Great Salt Lake in Utah and, after Smithson’s death in 1973, Serra helped to complete Amarillo Ramp in an artificial lake in Texas. His own site-specific sculptures included Spin Out: For Bob Smithson (1972-73), in the park-like surroundings of the Kröller-Müller Museum at Otterlo in the Netherlands. Here the three converging steel plates interacted with each other and their environment, exemplifying Serra’s aim that “the entire space becomes a manifestation of sculpture”.

The 1970s was a difficult decade in Serra’s life. In 1971 a worker was killed in an accident during the installation of one of Serra’s sculptures outside the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. His five-year marriage to the artist Nancy Graves ended in 1970, and his mother’s suicide in 1977 was followed two years later by the death of his father. However, in that decade he also met his future wife, the art historian Clara Weyergraf, with whom he collaborated on Steelmill/Stahlwerk. Clara was also to play a vital role in shaping his sculpture, as well as giving her name to Clara-Clara, a powerful, curvilinear work that was installed in the Tuileries garden in 1983. The history of this piece exemplifies Serra’s problems in making site-specific art, since it was originally intended to feature in a show at the Pompidou Centre, but at a late stage was deemed to be too heavy.

Clara-Clara’s travails were minor in comparison to the controversies surrounding Tilted Arc, a sculpture 36 metres long, set up at the Federal Plaza in Manhattan in 1981. Condemned for being intrusive, a magnet for graffiti artists and even a security risk, it was eventually removed in 1989, four years after a public hearing in which a majority of witnesses had advocated its preservation.

Despite this setback, Serra’s career continued to flourish. He had two retrospectives, in 1986 and 2007, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which also devoted a permanent room to his monumental work Equal (2015), as well as major exhibitions at home and abroad. He showed frequently with his gallery, Gagosian, in London, New York and Paris, most recently in 2021.

In 2001 he received a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale, in 2015 the Légion d’honneur in France and, three years later, the J Paul Getty Medal.

During his latter years, Serra became heavily involved with public projects in Qatar, above all the four steel plates, rising to over 14 metres and spanning more than a kilometre, erected west of Doha in 2014. Known as East-West/West-East, the work engages spectacularly with its surroundings, the gypsum plateaux of the Brouq nature reserve in the Dukhan desert. Serra himself described it as “the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done”.

He is survived by Clara.

🔔 Richard Serra, artist, born 2 November 1938; died 26 March 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 10.3

Beer Birthdays

John Gorrie (1803)

John Gund (1830)

Fred Horix (1843)

F.D. Radeke (1843)

Alois Alexander Assman (1856)

Sean Lewis (1984)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Harvey Kurtzman; cartoonist, Mad magazine founder (1924)

Clive Owen; actor (1964)

Greg Proops; comedian (1959)

Stevie Ray Vaughan; rock guitarist (1954)

Gore Vidal; writer (1925)

Famous Birthdays

Louis Aragon; French writer (1897)

P. P. Arnold; soul singer (1946)

Dr. Atl; Mexican painter (1875)

John Perry Barlow; poet & songwriter (1947)

Giovanni Battista Beccaria; Italian physicist (1716)

Gertrude Berg; actress & screenwriter (1899)

Pierre Bonnard; French artist (1867)

Benjamin Boretz; composer & theorist (1934)

Wade Boteler; actor & screenwriter (1888)

James M. Buchanan; economist (1919)

Lindsay Buckingham; rock guitarist (1949)

Johnny Burke; songwriter (1908)

Neve Campbell; actor (1973)

Natalie Savage Carlson; author (1906)

Chubby Checker; pop singer (1941)

Eddie Cochran; rock singer (1938)

Chris Collingwood; English-American singer-songwriter (1967)

Giovanni Comisso; Italian author and poet (1895)

Antoine Dauvergne; French violinist & composer (1713)

Pierre Deligne; Belgian mathematician (1944)

Gerardo Diego; Spanish poet (1896)

Jean Grémillon; French director, composer & screenwriter (1901)

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brook; English poet (1554)

Eirik Hegdal; Norwegian saxophonist & composer (1973)

James Herriot; English writer (1916)

Roy Horn; illusionist, with Siegfried (1944)

A.Y. Jackson; Canadian artist (1882)

Allan Kardec; French author (1804)

Jessica Parker Kennedy; Canadian actress (1984)

Pyotr Kozlov; Russian archaeologist & explorer (1863)

Ronnie Laws; jazz, R&B, & funk saxophone player (1950)

Tommy Lee; rock drummer (1962)

Henry Lerolle; French painter (1848)

Rob Liefeld; author and illustrator (1967)

Gustave Loiseau; French painter (1865)

G. Love; singer-songwriter & guitarist (1972)

Leo McCarey; film director (1898)

Keb' Mo'; blues singer, songwriter (1951)

Janel Moloney; actress (1969)

Alan O'Day; singer-songwriter (2940)

Emily Post; etiquette columnist (1872)

Steve Reich; modern composer (1936)

Kevin Richardson; singer-songwriter & actor (1971)

Aleksandr Rogozhkin; Russian director & screenwriter (1949)

John Ross; Cherokee nation chief (1790)

Josephine Sabel; singer & comedian (1866)

Sebastian Anton Scherer; German organist & composer (1631)

Seann William Scott; actor (1976)

Al Sharpton; politician, civil rights activist (1954)

Jake Shears; singer-songwriter (1978)

Laurie Simmons; photographer & director (1949)

Ashlee Simpson; singer-songwriter & actress (1984)

Shannyn Sossamon; actress (1978)

Gwen Stefani; rock singer (1969)

C. J. Stroud; football player (2001)

Tessa Thompson; actress (1983)

Sophie Treadwell; playwright & journalist (1885)

Johann Uz; German poet & judge (1720)

Buket Uzuner; Turkish author (1955)

Carl von Ossietzky; German journalist & activist (1889)

Jack Wagner; actor and singer (1959)

Dave Winfield; San Diego Padres OF (1951)

Thomas Wolfe; writer (1900)

Allen Woody; bass player & songwriter (1955)

Sergei Yesenin; Russian poet (1895)

[qwertyfingers]

10, 11, 19

[questions here]

10) A song that makes you feel relaxed

A problem I have generally is that a lot of 'soothing' music aggravates me because I have the 'needs more stimulus to calm down' kind of auDHD lol. I'm gonna drop a link here to a spotify playlist I listen to to calm down and then an album that I find very relaxing because I couldn't pick one track

Music for 18 Musicians - Erik Hall [originally composed by Steve Reich] | Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

11) A song that makes you dance

Was reminded that Alphabeat are brilliant by @abattoirstars recently and been having a great time revisiting their catalogue and remembering just how fun they are. Group that deserve their time in the sun again for sure.

Fascination - Alphabeat | Spotify | Apple | Youtube

19) A song that makes you emotional

Going for one that made me cry the first time I ever heard it and has done so an embarrassing number of times since

Minotaur Forgiving Knossos - Moonface | Spotify | Apple | Youtube

[hellocanticle]

Howard Hersh in Isolation

The COVID epidemic imposed unanticipated stresses on pretty much everyone. These stresses resulted in much pain and suffering but also prompted a variety of creative responses. This one, by the composer/producer/broadcaster Howard Hersh, consists of four pieces for solo instruments (flute, marimba, piccolo, and violin). The first piece, “Solo” (2006) for flute (Tod Brody) and the second,…