steve reich

There was a modicum of good news about the career of the 90s German rock band Endseig whose name meant Final Victory. It was that they weren’t particularly popular and their records sold fewer than a couple of thousand copies. That however may come as small comfort to anyone who scans their lyrics. “Throw them in prison of...
> culturalelsewhere/2077/the-difficult-arts-under-nazism-the-uncomfortable-past-and-present/

American composer Steve Reich finishes telling of his new work – an enormous three-years-in-the making multi-media project – and then reflects on the austerity of his early music which enraged audiences two decades ago. “Yeah, it’s easy to see backwards and how all these new things came from that early stuff –...
> culturalelsewhere/2016/steve-reich-interviewed-1990-the-maximal-minimalist/

Choreographer Robert Wilson is one of those rare individuals who can dress a stage to look like a private dream inspired by the stillness of a Rene Magritte paiting or a mad cabaret populated by frogs and floating chairs. Either way, at a glance you can spot a Wilson design. They are idiosyncratic, unique, often visionary, sometimes...
> film/3226/absolute-wilson-a-documentary-by-katharina-otto-bernstein-southbound-dvd/

Strictly speaking this should be credited to "Various Artists" because this 19-track collection is yet another in the Late Night Tales mix-tape series where an artist or group is invited to compile a disc of material which suits those lower-light moods. The Cinematic Orchestra here bring together such diverse spirits as Nick Drake...
> music/3214/the-cinematic-orchestra-late-night-tales-lnt-southbound/

Sampling, found sound, loops and tape manipulation are commonplace these days -- but back in '65 this piece by minimalist Steve Reich (interviewed here) anticipated a whole style of experimental music. And as with John Lennon -- who allegedly put the tape of the Beatles' b-side Rain backwards into his home player and loved the strange sound...
> fromthevaults/3117/steve-reich-its-gonna-rain-1965/

In his insightful, provocative and usefully gossipy book The Rest is Noise (2007), the writer and critic Alex Ross took a free-wheeling survey of 20th century classical music and addressed why the damn stuff had become so difficult for "modern" audiences. As with jazz -- which lost its populist mandate when free form arrived and...
> film/3043/glass-a-portrait-of-philip-in-twelve-parts-a-documentary-by-scott-hicks-madman-dvd/

In which our Norwegian big band of jazz-and-elsewhere players borrow heftily from all comers (epic soundtracks and European art films, minimalists, Afrobeat, jazz-rock) and deliver something of a quilt of jazzy colours. They say it is "Zappa-esque, more humorous prog-rock" but in its scale and changing moods, much of it...
> music/2918/jaga-jazzist-one-armed-bandit-ninja-tune-border/

There are few things more depressing than observing a revolution become a style (or the Beatles’ Revolution become a Nike ad). Or to witness innovation morph into cliché. When director Godfrey Reggio’s innovative film Koyaanisqatsi appeared in the early Eighties it had an immediate impact on popular music and film culture....
> essentialelsewhere/2650/philip-glass-koyaanisqatsi-1983/

For more than 30 years the Kronos Quartet have been innovators, rarely looking back or playing pieces more than a few times, always on the lookout for contemporary material and daring projects. They have recorded with John Zorn and Allen Ginsberg, played material by Jimi Hendrix, Terry Riley, the remarkable Inuit singer Tagaq,...
> music/2490/kronos-quartet-floodplain-nonesuch-warners/

It’s a rare composer who can simultaneously alienate and enthral distinct sections of an audience:  Igor Stravinsky unintentionally managed it in 1913 when he premiered The Rite of Spring before an outraged crowd and there were fistfights in the aisles of the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, and so did Alban Berg the same year in Vienna...
> culturalelsewhere/2026/steve-reichs-career-considered-from-taxi-driver-to-concert-master/

When the recording of Robert Moran’s opera was released last year there was an almost predictable ripple of controversy in the more staid sections of the classical world. And not because this dark, disconcerting piece offered no conventional narrative structure, that one of the performers was proto-punk Iggy Pop (who spoke his part...
> culturalelsewhere/1884/the-changing-culture-of-classical-music-1993-murder-in-the-theatre-seats/