EJP | Culture | Music master at London’s Barbican

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Music master at London’s Barbican

Updated: 13/Sep/2006 17:01

Steve Reich

Photo: Wonge Bergmann

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LONDON (EJP)--London’s autumn musical scene promises an exciting start with the music of American composer Steve Reich who celebrates his 70th birthday with some of the most innovative and moving examples of late 20th and early 21st-century music.

The Barbican will be the principal hosts for a festival entitled “Phases” which will include pieces from the last 30 years and which, to quote New Yorker magazine demonstrates the work of “the most original musical thinker of our times”.

Steve Reich has always been deeply conscious of his Jewish roots and the London programmes will include ‘Tehillim’ (1981) based on four Hebrew psalms, the major documentary music theatre work “The Cave” conceived and developed by Steve Reich with his video artist wife Beryl Korot, which made its world premiere in 1993 at the Vienna Festival.

A highly original and complicated work “The Cave” is based on the cave of Machpelah in Hebron which, according to both Jewish and Muslim writings, is the burial place of Abraham and Sarah.

During the performance various accounts and interviews take place to highlight the common heritage of the three great religions.

“Different Trains” is an immensely moving work, distinctively rhythmic as befitting the musical language of trains in which Reich describes the experiences and differences of a Holocaust survivor, an American railroad porter and his own happy love of trains as a child.

Then there is the Barbican commission, a new work entitled “Daniel Variations”. The Daniel in question is Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street journalist who was murdered in Pakistan. The variations use texts from the Book of Daniel and quotes some of Daniel Pearl’s own words. “My name is Daniel Pearl, I am a Jewish American.”

The Steve Reich Festival also includes dance pieces with choreography by Akram Khan and Richard Alston.

Phases: The Music Of Steve Reich. 28 September-8 October 2006. The Barbican London. www.barbican.org.uk