EJP | Culture | Music master at London’s Barbican

	Sunday, July 05, 2009 13 Tamuz, 5769

News

France

Germany

Western Europe

Eastern Europe

EU-Israel affairs

US 2008 ELECTION

Iran - Holocaust

Conflict in Gaza

Voices

Culture

In Depth

Mideast Crisis

World Cup

On Anglo Jewry

Week at a glance

France Election

EU and Annapolis Summit

News from outside of Europe

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Mumbai Terror

DURBAN II

WILLIAMSON

The Calendar

Links

Music master at London’s Barbican

Updated: 13/Sep/2006 17:01

Steve Reich

Photo: Wonge Bergmann

Page tools

	Email to friend
	Print this page
	Bookmark this page
	Add your view

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

Day in history

5 July 1960
The then 50-year old Jewish community of the Belgian Congo, Africa, consisting of 2500 Jews fled in the wake of riots which followed independence

Eastern European Jews from Romania and Poland first arrived in Congo in 1907. Following these immigrants, several Jewish families arrived from South Africa and the land of Israel. In 1911, Sephardic Jews from the island of Rhodes settled in Congo.