Steve Reich : Music for 18 musicians (question)

FWIW here is the concerts list for the remainder of 2009.

Oct 31 Clapping Music
Notambu Ensemble
Tonhalle
Dusseldorf, Germany

Nov 3 Vermont/Tokyo Counterpoint
American Modern Ensemble
Galapgos Art Space in 'Dumbo'
Brooklyn, USA

Nov 7 Different Trains
Kronos Quartet
Kimmel Cente
Philadelpihia, PA, USA

Nov 9 Different Trains
Kronos Quartet
Juniata College
Huntingdon, PA, USA

Nov 9 Eight Lines
Lunapark
Eduard Flipse Zaal
Roterdam, Holland

Nov 13 City Life
Choreographed by Liss Fain as Resolved
Yerba Buena Center
San Francisco, CA, USA

Nov 16 Double Sextet
Sonic Generator
Georgia Tech Alumni Hou
Atlanta, GA, USA

Nov 19 Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings
Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra/ Kirk Trevor
Tilson Music Hall, IS
Indianapolis, IN, USA

Nov 22 Duet
Vashon-Maury Chamber Orchestra/ Karin Choo
Vashon Methodist Churc
Vashon, WA, USA

Dec 4 Drumming
Percusemble Berlin
Nikolaisaal
Potsdam, Germany

Dec 6 Mallet Quartet (World Premiere)
Amadinda Quartet
Budapest, Hungary

read a well-known blogger talking about how Mf18M sounds the way it does because of the tape loops and i cried a little.

it's in an interview not a piece, but still

So Reich composed this piece called “Music For 18 Musicians” and it starts off with two identical tape decks and they are playing the same note on some kind of mallet instrument. Same identical tape deck, speed, note, everything, by the nature of two things can’t always be the same, 10 seconds into the song, the notes start to separate and it creates this really cool aural stimulus, I’ve never heard anything like this

;_;

huh, that's not right, is it? He's surely just conflating his Reich pieces?

yeah, MfM18 is definitely all live, no tape loop phasing.

I saw this last month at Roskilde, was amazing to see live. Revelatory. Only minus was that Metallica decided they had to do a loud soundcheck on another stage, ten hours before they went on. Bastards.

yet another reason why Metallica should be dropped from a great height

Those two sentences from that blog are just so wrong. It reads like he's never actually heard Reich and is writing that after someone's told him about some Reich pieces and he can't quite remember it all properly.

This thread should've been titled, "Question for 18 Musicians."

this is hilarious to watch people play

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLckHHc25ww

World's slowest punchline.

Colin Currie group absolutely killed it tonight at the Royal Festival Hall, fourth time around for me and I'd never seen it rendered with as much fire before.

I was wondering if it was perhaps because the other three times Reich himself had been either performing or overseeing, this time he was absent.

i love this record so much

It's the best

But also which one do you mean

ECM foreva imo

ECM. Played it at my wedding while the guests were arriving.

With In C, I encourage everyone to try a variety renditions (my collection is at 18), but for Music for 18, there's only the ECM.

NONESUCH

ecm is good too, but it cannot displace what lies deep within my heart

FITE!

ECM forever!

However, was in a shop in Providence last weekend & spotted a copy of this in the "New Arrivals" bin: https://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/reich-ensemble-modern-synergy-vocals-steve-tokyo-opera-city-21-5-lp/FOX.019LP.html

Bought it out of duty--guess it's not technically out for a few more days--& it's great although the sound significantly drops out toward the end of side one. Not sure if the original master was fucked or what. Are there any other commercially available versions out there w/ Reich as part of the ensemble aside from the ECM, Nonesuch, & this one?

https://erikhall.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-18-musicians-steve-reich

I’m so lame my copy is the Grand Valley State University New Music something-or-other version

supporting talented young people, that's good

Will def check this out. I listened to Drumming today, so good.

more than one review i've seen has called it 'reverent', and its 'arrangement' choices certainly aren't very adventuresome—it would have been something to hear him try something more with the moog than just mimic a bass clarinet—but it does have this odd quality that comes from the composition, like on other newer versions but more highlighted, where it seems like you just can't get away from it, if you play it in rhythm and with something like the full complement of personnel, so it doesn't sound like a different version, just like you're suddenly hearing bits of the same thing that you never heard that way before. you know it's different to hear it with guitars or a moog or whatever, but at the same time the way the composition activates your memory is so obliterating that you can't really remember what the difference amounts to.

reportedly he added some 'room air' to the parts as he recorded them, it seems like it would be more interesting to hear what a version WITHOUT 'air' sounded like. as is it seems like all versions are rather dependent on that air for some of their more attractive qualities.

This is a really interesting and effective arrangement and it sounds great. Won't replace the live acoustic recordings ofc but does something new.

xps ha

I guess I wasn't expecting a radical reimagining. It's a notated work; idrg what 'reverent' means in that context. I do feel like something is changed pretty significantly by using a drum machine and overdubbing the parts one at a time - there's a level of mechanical precision beyond what you get from live musicians playing together in real time.

it's notated but i guess i think of it as kind of existing within spitting distance of vernacular semi-notated or improvised music for which 'cover versions' of records (not compositions alone exactly) have led us to expect more of re-visitations. so it's hard for it to escape perceptions of reverence.

i hadn't noticed a machine, you mean just that he is tracking/gridding the parts (presumably because it would have been impossible to keep them straight recording one at a time?)?

i don't care that much for the ecm version so maybe this is true of it too, but it seems like one thing he did here unsmooths differences between the sections somewhat.

It does sound gridded, yeah, which is probably the key difference I was hearing. There is a credit for a Roland CR-68 drum machine on the Bandcamp page so I figured at least one of the parts was programmed on that but I couldn't identify which it would be.

There’s only a few sounds that a CR-68 can make

Can you pick it out in the recording?

I admire the devotional aspect but the identical arrangement with simpler timbres makes me feel like I'm listening to a low bitrate MP3 of the ECM recording

I think the CR-68 is used to emulate the maracas/shakers

starting in section VI

Ah ha, that makes sense.

I'm enjoying the textures on this version. It would be interesting to hear or make a fully electronic/programmed version though (not saying it would be good, part of the magic is the super tight but still human playing that keeps the loops from getting stale).

i would love to hear a keith fullerton whitman version

or tbh one with some fuckin amen breaks

This is making me want to dig out my copy of Reich Remixed, which might be a mistake, it's been so long.

Oh dear, yeah...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl6hCtDes24

thinking of getting four or five versions up and shuffling them track by track for some super chaotic energy

There was a version done on 18 synths in a cathedral in Dublin a few years ago. Was absolutely great.

For a second there my estimation for Val Kilmer really went up
(Val Kilmer is not involved)

Wow. Just wow. Val Wilmer, on meeting Steve Reich, in @dubdobdee’s brilliant new book on the UK music press, A Hidden Landscape Once A Week. pic.twitter.com/GhBDEKsO5p

— Andrew Male (@Andr6wMale) January 25, 2019

she relates the same anecdote, without naming reich explicitly, in the first few pages of "as serious as your life"

does he not disparage ornette coleman specifically in that anecdote also? poopooing his third stream skies of america?

lol thats depressing

xp no, that story is about members of the london philharmonic talking shit about SOA, which they'd been hired to play. the steve reich story follows closely. the whole point of the introduction being a kind of litany of instances where black musicians aren't taken seriously by "important" white composers and institutions.

ah, thanks for correcting me

Steve "Third" Reich

Rumoured to be a Trump supporter too, to top it all off.

Music For 18 MAGAtts

Yeah wtf

uh, the cost of music school and "being a composer" vastly exceeds the cost of a piano ...

Tell it to a homeschooled composer I know named Mozart.

Eh, it's true enough insofar as there is a cost to any education program and financially uncertain life choice but I don't think it requires 1% level privilege and have not heard of any evidence that people involved with new music composition are more politically conservative on average than the general population. (My anecdotal experience, since that seems to be what we're working with here, is on the contrary.)

xp cf Schoenberg

I love how these threads systematically bring out all the canonical, downright snooty clichés about art music. Not that it didn't have it coming, but still.

*notated art music

I mean, I really don't think most people in 'this world' grew up as wealthy or well-connected as Taylor Swift or Lana del Rey.

If it was just posh people that had pianos in the home the history of bebop would have likely been a whole lot duller perhaps? Just saying like.

yeah we have ridden this ride before, I feel

i generally don't try anymore

xpost

'Still D.R.E.' prominently features the piano as a conspicuous sign of wealth iirc.

I don't think it requires 1% level privilege and have not heard of any evidence that people involved with new music composition are more politically conservative on average than the general population. (My anecdotal experience, since that seems to be what we're working with here, is on the contrary.)

Considering these composers come from a variety of different countries with diverse economic systems, it's not easy to generalize. Coming from America, most of the new music composers I am familiar with do come from privileged backgrounds. They are mostly cis white men. Most of them are baby boomers or older. Compared to other cis white baby boomer men, they tend to be more politically progressive. However, considering this type of music is highly connected to academia and avant-garde arts, which tend to be way more politically to the left than average, these nice liberal white men are conservative by comparison.

In other words a reet bunch of melts, lol

As an American, I am not clear on what a "melt" is -- but you probably are otm

Cancel pianos.

― The nexus of the crisis and the origin of storms (Sund4r), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I haven't attended a concert by him since. Happy to keep things at a distance as I can't be arsed paying money to see good music played by bigots lol.

lol all concerts have been cancelled for the past 6 months here and nothing is scheduled for the next 6 months at least so ...

Xp

I hope that isn't Howard Riley you are talking about, he's the only avant garde jazz pianist hero we have from Hudds!

Nope he isn't from the jazz scene.

Sarah - encountered his awful twitter about two years ago. Probably started going to his recitals ten years ago.

wait who? i am confused. Rzewski?

Luckily in the UK and I assume lots of other countries oiks still get access to free or at least heavily subsidised music lessons. Give our gov a bit more time tho

Haha so am I! sorry got our wires crossed (just checked whether Rzewski had twitter) xp

MEV invented twitter iirc

Free music lessons ended a long time ago and I think most local authorities no longer even subsidise them either - although as with most things in the UK it depends upon your postcode.

fwiw, somewhat of a response on his Twitter today

Steve Reich’s response to last week’s article in The Guardian by Philip Clark: pic.twitter.com/5Kek546yxE

— Steve Reich (@SteveReich) September 16, 2020

Was listening to Inside Music at the weekend on Radio 3 and Tai Murray played a selection from Drumming, which I thought was kinda interesting.