A discussion with Eric Beach and Adam Sliwinski of So Percussion on Steve Reich's "Drumming"
ABOUT THE PIECE:
"Drumming Part I, for small tuned drums, begins with a single sound in a 12-beat cycle; there are rests on all other beats. Gradually, one at a time, other sounds replace the rests, until the basic rhythmic pattern of Drumming is constructed. This is the only rhythmic pattern of the entire piece (all four parts which last between 55 and 75 minutes). When this pattern has been established by two drummers in unison, one of them gradually increases his tempo, while the other does not, so that in a few seconds he is one beat ahead of his partner; that is, they are one beat out of phase. They now maintain this new relationship, so that the combination of their parts produces new patterns, which in turn become the basis for the third and fourth players' parts. This process of shifting phases, holding to the newly-formed relationship and making use of the resulting patterns, is then repeated with two and then three drummers, each one beat away from the other." -- Steve Reich
ABOUT THE COMPOSER:
Steve Reich was recently called "America's greatest living composer." (The Village VOICE), "...the most original musical thinker of our time" (The New Yorker) and "...among the great composers of the century" (The New York Times).. From his early taped speech pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) to his and video artist Beryl Korot's digital video opera Three Tales (2002), Mr. Reich's path has embraced not only aspects of Western Classical music, but the structures, harmonies, and rhythms of non-Western and American vernacular music, particularly jazz. "There's just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them," states The Guardian (London).
Performing organizations around the world marked Steve Reich's 70th- birthday year, 2006, with festivals and special concerts. In the composer's hometown of New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center joined forces to present complementary programs of his music, and in London, the Barbican mounted a major retrospective. Concerts were also presented in Amsterdam, Athens, Brussels, Baden-Baden, Barcelona, Birmingham, Budapest, Chicago, Cologne, Copenhagen, Denver, Dublin, Freiburg, Graz, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Paris, Porto, Vancouver, Vienna and Vilnius among others. In addition, Nonesuch Records released its second box set of Steve Reich's works, Phases: A Nonesuch Retrospective, in September 2006. The five-CD collection comprises fourteen of the composer's best-known pieces, spanning the 20 years of his time on the label.
ABOUT SO PERCUSSION:
For over a decade, So Percussion has redefined the modern percussion ensemble as a flexible, omnivorous entity, pushing its voice to the forefront of American musical culture. Praised by the New Yorker for their "exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam," So's adventurous spirit is written into the DNA passed down from composers like John Cage and Steve Reich, as well as from pioneering ensembles like the Kronos Quartet and Nexus Percussion. So Percussion's career now encompasses 13 albums, touring throughout the USA and around the world, a dizzying array of collaborative projects, several ambitious educational programs, and a steady output of their own music.
When the founding members of So Percussion convened as graduate students at the Yale School of Music, their initial goal was to present an exciting repertoire of pieces by 20th century luminaries such as Cage, Reich, and Iannis Xenakis. An encounter with David Lang, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and co-founder of New York's Bang on a Can organization, yielded their first commissioned piece: the 36 minute, three movement the so-called laws of nature. Since that first major new work, So has commissioned some of the greatest American composers of our time to build a new repertoire, including Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, Paul Lansky, Martin Bresnick, and many others.
So Percussion is heavily involved in mentoring young musicians. Its members are Co-Directors of a new percussion department at the Bard College-Conservatory of Music. This top-flight undergraduate program enrolls each student in a double-degree (Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts) course in the Conservatory and Bard College, equipping them with elite conservatory training and a broad liberal arts education. In 2009, they created the annual So Percussion Summer Institute on the campus of Princeton University.
A Discussion of Steve Reich's "Drumming" with So Percussion | |
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| Education | Upload TimePublished on 18 Sep 2013 |
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