MusicSome Came Running by Glenn Kenny

Now for something relatively different

By May 2, 2011January 12th, 20263 Comments

110502-steve-reich-5

I was priv­ileged to be asked by Spin.com to cov­er the Steve Reich 75th Birthday Concert at Carnegie Hall on Saturday night. It was splen­did, really. (That’s the group So Percussion per­form­ing the first piece on the pro­gram, Mallet Quartet.) My writeup of the event is here. 

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3 Comments

  • James Keepnews says:
    May 2, 2011 at 8:02 pm

    Love your music writ­ing, here as else­where – who else is gonna namecheck The Pop Group and “Marquee Moon” in a Steve Reich review? Despite the ter­ror the four words “Wilco and the National” struck in my heart – Nels’ gotta eat, and all, and yet… – sounds like it was an incred­ible night of music. Kudos.

  • That Fuzzy Bastard says:
    May 2, 2011 at 9:19 pm

    Jesus Christ… I’ve accep­ted that liv­ing in NYC means there will be some­thing you wished you saw that you ended up miss­ing every single night. But this? I nev­er saw a single ad for it! Dammit! Nice writeup, though—your point about Reich’s avoid­ance of cli­mactic cath­arsis is spot-on.

  • Fernando says:
    May 3, 2011 at 10:03 am

    Excellent piece, Glenn! A really smart blend of writ­ing for people at all levels of famili­ar­ity with Reich’s music. If I did­n’t know Steve Reich before read­ing that, I would cer­tainly be curi­ous to check him out; on the oth­er hand, I think you make some very cogent points about Reich’s style (poin­ted out about by TFB). Also found myself nod­ding with your assess­ment of Philip Glass’s “relent­less­ness.” I think “Different Trains” is one of the most power­ful pieces of music in recent times, so I’m def­in­itely eager to hear “WTC 9/11.”