aworks :: "new" american classical music

Piano Phase (1967). Steve Reich /i've gotta.../

I'm a rather eclectic listener but college radio can be too much even for me...

KZSU Stanford this evening pleasantly surprised with Steve Reich's Piano Phase but soon followed with the Evaporators' I've Gotta Rash.

i've gotta rash: mp3 piano phase: wikipedia aworks

Piano Phase (1967). Steve Reich

What's this? A DVD being released in May with works by Philip Glass and Steve Reich performed by Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies?  Interesting...

From Rotten Tomatoes:

this release is a combined visual and aural delight that first came to fruition at an Austrian festival dedicated to showcasing the electronic arts (also called Arts Electronica).

Piano Phase / Having Never Written a Note for Percussion

Alex Ross in the New Yorker also covered the Bang on a Can festival at Symphony Space in New York. 

In a classic Reich piece such as “Piano Phase”—given an electrifying, video-enhanced performance by David Cossin at Bang on a Can—you can perceive the influence of modal jazz or Motown bass lines more than you can hear them. This implacably original sound influenced much pop music in turn, and the composer eventually found himself with the unlikely title of “Father of DJ Culture.”

He also says that the "defining moment" of the event was James Tenney's playing of fifteen gongs. Not coincidentally, in Sonic Youth's
Goodbye to the 20th Century CD mentioned previously,  the standout work, above those by Cage, Reich, Ono, et. al., was Tenney's Having Never Written a Note for Percussion. This is an ominous, machine-like work for percussion, striking if not beautiful.

Piano Phase/Video Phase (1967). Steve Reich

At Symphony Space in New York, Bernard Holland in the New York Times reports Bang on a Can played Steve Reich's Piano Phase/Video Phase, an update to his marimba and piano work Piano Phase (1967) where the artist David Cossin was recorded via video augmenting the original work. 

Other works at the concert:
- Muddy Waters. Ingram Marshall.
- Vortex. Annea Lockwood.
- Streetwalker. Donnacha Dennehy.
- Pelvic Noise. Thurston Moore (of the rock group Sonic Youth)
- Stroking Piece No. 1. Thurston Moore.
- Pendulum Music. Steve Reich. (also recorded on Sonic Youth's Goodbye 20th Century CD)

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Kyle Gann hears the tune from Piano Phase on NPR, and counts it as a victory for postclassical music.