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Drumming (1970-71). Steve Reich #audacious

The Music Salon on the most audacious composition of the 20th Century:

Simple. And, to my mind, absolutely devastating to the musical aesthetic that says that the only road forward is to keep adding layers of complexity.

I might have said Einstein on the Beach but I haven't seen it (yet).

Drumming (1970-71). Steve Reich /ictus/

Comments on the Ictus version of Steve Reich's Drumming, which I find greatly superior to the old, overly insistent DG version:

• "Drumming itself is an odyssey: a meditative ritual of motion from low to high, from primitive to refined, and the musicians "traveling" the long line of percussion instruments at the back of the stage showed that Ms. De Keersmaeker and the Ictus Ensemble understood." (Daniel Felsenfeld/Andante) 
• 'The closer, "Drumming – Part I," is an athletic romp, an explosion of energy set to the imposing percussion of Ictus.' (David Johnston/nytheatre.com)
• "Precision, drive, and earnestness characterize this performance of Steve Reich's early minimalist epic Drumming in a way that misses the proverbial forest for the trees." (Jed Distler/Classics Today)
• "The breathtaking feeling of simplicity/complexity in this work is transmitted with an amazing skill by the Belgians."  (Sequenza21)

Now I need to re-listen to the So Percussion version.

Reich: Drumming - Ictus, Syner...

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Drumming (1971). Steve Reich /the emperor's new groove/

And next, David Byrne comments on the Steve Reich concert:

The music shimmers; it’s a kind of musical Brownian motion. Even when he incorporates cellos and strings the effect is percolating, bubbling.

On the other hand, he doesn't think Reich's music "grooves" in the manner of say, African popster King Sunny Adé. I never really thought about it but in my list of top concerts would be King Sunny Adé at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz as well as Kronos Quartet in Ojai where they played Steve Reich's Different Trains. The former definitely grooved but the latter had the pulse, in a notated, restrained, contemporary classical kind of way...