Concert Review: The Master Builder

Steve Reich turns 80 at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Footage from Hindenburg, part of Steve Reich's Three Tales.
Image by Beryl Korot © 2002 Nonesuch Records.

Steve Reich is now 80, and remains at the forefront of the school of American minimalism. On Tuesday night, Carnegie Hall celebrated Mr. Reich's birthday with a concert featuring Sō Percussion, the International Contemporary Ensemble, members of Synergy Vocals and three of Mr. Reich's major compositions, including first Carnegie Hall presentation of his 2002 "video opera" Three Tales, a collaboration with his wife Beryl Korot.

Superconductor 2016 Summer Festival Preview Part IV: Lincoln Center Festival

Steve Reich, Chinese opera and (as usual) serious fun.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

He's cooler than you: Steve Reich.
Photo © Nonesuch Records.

The Lincoln Center Festival is the most fluid of the major summer events that fall under the loose umbrella of "classical music festivals" in New York City. One year, it might be presenting the symphonies of Anton Bruckner, another a slew of Russian operas rarely seen and heard at Lincoln Center. This year, it's changed again, with a focus on the music of Steve Reich, the rare art of Chinese opera and...wedding music from the Balkans. Why? Read on.

Carnegie Hall 2016-17 Preview: Masks, Marathons, and Marvels

Ambitious 2016-17 season offers Mahler, Bruckner and a Venetian festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Venetian festival La Serenissima comes to Carnegie Hall in February 2017.
Original image courtesy of  and © 2016 by Carnegie Hall. Photo alteration by the author.

For the last three years, Carnegie Hall's annual press conference unveiling the slate of its forthcoming season has been held upstairs at the no-longer-new Resnick Education Wing, atop the world-famous music hall at the corner of West 57th St. and Seventh Avenue. Today's conference featured a lengthy presentation by still-reigning Executive and Artistic Director Clive Gillinson, a conversation between Mr. Gillinson and next year's composer-in-residence Steve Reich, and the distribution of weighty vermilion folders to members of the working music press. From the looks of the schedule, next year is going to be...big.
Make that...really, really big.

Concert Review: Reunited With Minimal Fuss

Steve Reich and Philip Glass open BAM NextWave--together.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Across the great divide: the composers Philip Glass (left) and Steve Reich.
Photo courtesy Nonesuch Records.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Philip Glass and Steve Reich were friends and sometimes collaborators. A rift between the two men resulted in each becoming a separate driving force behind minimalism, a compositional style that favored small melodic cells, expanded, repeated and grown into huge crystalline structures that beguiled the ear and soothed the mind. Both men are now 77, and have ended their forty-year feud. On Tuesday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music,  the composers took the stage together for the first time in decades.