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Program 690: Steve Reich

KALW Broadcast Date: March 27, 2022 | Host: Mark Abramson

Steve Reich was born in 1936, and spent time in both New York City and California during his childhood. After getting a degree in Philosophy at Cornell, he studied at Juilliard from 1958-1961, and then he attended Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud, earning a master’s degree in composition in 1963. Reich worked at the San Francisco Tape Music Center during the 1960s, and was a part of the premiere of Riley’s In C at the Center in 1964. In C combines simple musical patterns, offset in time, to create a slowly shifting, cohesive whole. This technique was very influential for Reich, and he adopted the approach to compose his first major work, It’s Gonna Rain.

Tonight’s broadcast will present a rare tape preserved in the Other Minds Archives: a concert of Reich’s music recorded at the opening of the Art Museum of the University of California, Berkeley in November 1970. The recording was originally aired on KPFA, Pacifica Radio, in 1970, and the announcer was Richard Friedman, who also hosted Music from Other Minds for many years. These were four early works by Steve Reich: Four Organs (1970), My Name Is (1967), Piano Phase (1967), and Phase Patterns (1970). After the archival tape, we’ll listen to one of Reich’s most well-loved works, Music for 18 Musicians, the ECM Records version, released in 1978.

Program Audio

30-Second Spot

Track Info & Links
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Titles: Four Organs (1970), My Name Is (1967), Piano Phase (1967), and Phase Patterns (1970)
Composer: Steve Reich
Performers: Steve Chambers, Werner Jepson, Art Murphy, Steve Reich, John Gibson
Recording Title: Steve Reich at UC Berkeley University Museum (1970)
Record Label: Other Minds Archival recording
Catalog Number: n/a

from-ca_reich-music-for-18

Title: Music For 18 Musicians (1976)
Composer: Steve Reich
Performers: Steve Reich and Musicians
Recording Title: Music For 18 Musicians (1978)
Record Label: ECM Records
Catalog Number: ECM 1129

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