journal.nonesuch.com

NY Times: Steve Reich's "Daniel Variations" "Merits, Rewards" Multiple Listens

Steve Reich's latest album, Daniel Variations, comprises both the title piece, written in 2006 in memory of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, and Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings, composed in 2005 for the London Sinfonietta (which performs the piece on the recording) and choreographer Akram Khan. The New York Times's Steve Smith writes that the new collection finds the composer working across the divide into which his pieces are too-often categorized: the pre-Different Trains output focused on "processes and techniques" and those that followed that seminal 1988 work addressing "charged issues of identity, spirituality, and cultural politics."

The piece Daniel Variations, writes Smith, "avoids both sentimentality and vituperation," despite its subject matter. It is, instead "a work of contemplative commemoration, which merits and rewards repeated explorations." The second Variations piece, he says, "bears its attractions closer to the surface" and is one that "seems ideally suited to choreography" with the "shimmering, rippling rhythmic patterns" of its first and third movements coming on either side of the middle movement's "mesmerizing stillness."

To read the full review, visit nytimes.com.

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Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD, plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Here is our weekly list of just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists:

John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine receives two very different performances this weekend: first, tonight, at the Frauenthal Center, Muskegan, Michigan, by the West Shore Symphony Orchestra, led by Scott Speck. On Saturday night, the piece will be one of many Adams works included in the Hamburg Ballet's performance of choreographer John Neumeier's Parzifal: Episodes and Echo (pictured at right) at the Staatsoper in Hamburg. Also included are Tromba Lontana, Christian Zeal and Activity, The Wound-Dresser, El Dorado, and The Dharma at Big Sur. Tickets: hamburgballet.de.

The Black Gondola, the composer's orchestration of Liszt's La Lugubre Gondola, will receive two performances this weekend by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Trevor Pinnock, first at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam tonight, and then at de Vereeniging in Nijmegen, Netherlands, tomorrow. Tickets: concertgebouw.nl.

Also receiving two performances is Road Movies, which violinist Midori and pianist Charles Abramovic will play Saturday at Zeche Zollverein, in Essen, Germany, and on Sunday at Zehntscheuer in Rottenburg.
Also on Sunday, Adams's Chamber Symphony will be performed by the Tokyo Sinfonietta, led by Yasuaki Itakura, at Cité de la musique in Paris.

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Laurie Anderson brings her Homeland tour to the sparkling KKL Luzern Concert Hall in Switzerland tonight (tickets: kkl-luzern.ch) and then to Modena, Italy, for a performance at the Teatro Communale on Sunday.

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The European leg of the Raising Sand tour continues with T Bone Burnett joining Robert Plant and Alison Krauss in a sold-out concert at Philipshalle in Dusseldorf, Germany, Saturday night, and the Forest National Arena in Brussels on Sunday. Tonight, BBC Two will air the group's performance on Later ... with Jools Holland. You can watch a video preview of their set, the song "Killing the Blues," at bbc.co.uk/later. Also on Later tonight: Emmylou Harris, with a song from her forthcoming Nonesuch release, All I Intended to Be.

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Kronos Quartet has begun its tour of Europe, heading to Leon, Spain, tonight, for a performance that includes John Adams's Fellow Traveler, written for Kronos in celebration of Peter Sellars's 50th birthday. The Quartet will then bring the piece to Bucharest, Romania, on Sunday for a performance at Sala Radio that also includes Steve Reich's Triple Quartet, which the group premiered in 1999 and recorded for Nonesuch in 2001.

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The Blues Alley in Washington, DC, hosts Nicholas Payton tonight for the second night in a row; there will be an 8 PM and a 10 PM set. Tickets: bluesalley.com.

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Dawn Upshaw celebrates Mother's Day at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on Sunday with Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in a program including the New York premiere of She Was Here, composer Osvaldo Golijov's arrangement of Schubert Lieder. (Tickets: carnegiehall.org.) Dawn spoke on WNYC's Soundcheck with host John Schaefer earlier this week on being dubbed "The Composers Muse," as she will be honored at a Meet the Composer benefit later this month.

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The next stop on Laura Veirs's solo tour, with opener Liam Finn, is Denver, Colorado, tonight for a show at the Walnut Room presented by Radio 1190. (Tickets: thewalnutroom.com.) On Sunday, they'll head to Omaha, Nebraska, for a set at the Slowdown's Front Room. (Tickets: theslowdown.com.)

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Wilco heads to the Southwest, with openers Retribution Gospel Choir (featuring Alan Sparhawk of Low), for a concert tonight at the University of New Mexico's Pope Joy Hall in Albuquerque (tickets: unmtickets.com), before heading to Austin, Texas, for two sold-out nights at Stubbs BBQ, beginning Sunday.

Steve Reich Discusses "Daniel Variations" on BBC Radio 4's "Today"

Steve Reich spoke with BBC Radio 4's Today show, the network's flagship daily news and current affairs program, this morning about his latest Nonesuch release Daniel Variations and the composition of its title track, inspired by slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

To listen again, visit bbc.co.uk/radio4 or click here to link directly to the RealAudio file and hear the segment at about 23 minutes in.

T Bone Burnett is scheduled to appear on the show tomorrow morning to preview his forthcoming Nonesuch release, Tooth of Crime.

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Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD, plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Steve Reich, Glenn Kotche to Perform at Alice Tully Hall's 2009 Re-Opening

Steve Reich and Glenn Kotche will be among the artists celebrating the unveiling of the re-imagined Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York during the two-week Opening Nights Festival, February 22 through March 8, 2009. On March 3, each will take part in New York, New Music, New Hall, a marathon event of new and seminal works.

Glenn will join Bang on a Can All-Stars for the New York premiere of one of his compositions, and Steve Reich & Musicians and Synergy Vocals come together for the composer's groundbreaking 1976 work Music for 18 Musicians, the 1998 recording of which earned a Grammy for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Also on the bill is Alarm Will Sound, premiering works by Derek Bermel, Oscar Bianchi, and Caleb Burhans.

Tickets go on sale May 28. For more information, visit lincolncenter.org.

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Click here to add Steve Reich's Music for Eighteen Musicians CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the album MP3s at no additional cost. For Reich's complete Nonesuch catalog, click here.

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Below are just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists:

The San Francisco Ballet will perform to John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony (2007) each night this weekend in Mark Morris's new piece, Joyride, for the final nights of the Ballet's New Works Festival Program B, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. "If you appreciate ballet that offers dazzlingly sophisticated musicality," says the San Francisco Chronicle, "then you could hardly do better than Mark Morris's Joyride." Tickets: sfballet.org.

The Thüringer Symphoniker, led by Oliver Weder, will pair Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Tromba Lontana for performances in Unterwellenborn, Germany, tonight and Saturday. Both pieces appear on the 1987 Nonesuch recording, The Chairman Dances. More info: boosey.com.

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Laurie Anderson continues her four-night residency at the Barbican in London through Saturday. Folks in the UK can catch Laurie on Later with Jools Holland tonight at 11:35 PM GMT, on BBC Two.

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Toumani Diabate will play a special concert in the intimate space of LSO St. Luke's in London, performing songs from his new solo CD, The Mande Variations, as part of the Barbican's Spring 08 Contemporary Events series.

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Bill Frisell's new quintet, featuring Chris Cheek on sax and clarinet, Larry Grenadier on bass, Ron Miles on cornet, and Rudy Royston on drums, will make its European debut on Sunday in Cheltenham, England's Everyman Theater as part of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Tickets: cheltenhamfestivals.com.

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Kronos Quartet plays its last US date of the season this Saturday before heading to Europe for the rest of May. The group will perform at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, with special guest Tanya Tagaq, for the LA premiere of their collaboration Nunavut and the world premiere of Derek Charke's Tundra Songs. (The Canadian Press has a profile of Tagaq, a throat singer from Arctic Canada, and Charke, a Nova Scotian composer, at canadianpress.google.com.) Kronos will also give the LA premiere of Tusen Tankar, the Nonesuch Store-exclusive bonus track on its latest release, The Cusp of Magic, and perform Sigur Rós's Flugufrelsarinn. Tickets: laphil.com.

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After making her way across Australia, k.d. lang returns to the Sydney State Theatre with her Watershed tour tonight and for a just-added second show, on Saturday, before heading to New Zealand next week.

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The Brad Mehldau Trio will perform two sets tonight at Western Michigan University's Williams Theater in Kalamazoo as part of the Gilmore Keyboard Festival's Jazz Club series. Tickets: thegilmoreiscoming.com.

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Friends of the Sheldon in St. Louis, Missouri, present Randy Newman at that city's Sheldon Concert Hall Sunday night for a concert to benefit the Hall's education programs, both in schools and at the venue. Tickets: thesheldon.org.

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Nicholas Payton, fresh off his performance at the New Orleans JazzFest last weekend, headlines the Main Street JazzFest in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on the festival's Main Stage Saturday at 7:30 PM. "Opportunities to see a jazz artist of Payton's caliber in the Middle Tennessee area are few and far between," says the Nashville Scene. All events are free and open to the public. For a complete schedule of events: mainstreetjazzfest.com.

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Punch Brothers' Chris Thile will play a late-night solo set at the Living Room on New York's Lower East Side at 11 PM Sunday night. Tickets: livingroomny.com.

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Steve Reich's 1994 piece for two marimbas, Nagoya Marimbas, will be performed tonight at the Royal Northern College of Music's Haden Freeman Concert Hall in Manchester, England, by the RNCM Percussion Ensemble's Ian Wright and Paul Patrick. On Satudray, the full, 46-minute version of the composer's Desert Music (1983), for amplified voices and orchestra, will be performed at Fairfield University's Quick Center in Connecticut, by New York's Shen Wei Dance Arts ensemble.

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Wilco will be in Winnipeg, Manitoba, tonight to play the Burton Cummings Theatre (named "one of Winnipeg's Seven Wonders" in a recent Winnipeg Free Press reader survey) and will head back south of the 49th parallel for a sold-out show at the Emerson Cultural Center in Bozeman, Montana, Sunday night.

Listen to Steve Reich Discuss "Daniel Variations," from WNYC's "The Leonard Lopate Show"

Steve Reich stopped by the WNYC studios yesterday to discuss his new album, Daniel Variations, and the creation of its title piece, on The Leonard Lopate Show. You can download an MP3 of the segment at wnyc.org or listen to it in its entirety here:

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Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD, plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Steve Reich to Discuss "Daniel Variations" on WNYC's "The Leonard Lopate Show"

Steve Reich will be the featured guest today on The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC, 93.9 FM. The composer will discuss his new album, Daniel Variations, and its title piece, written in memory of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

To listen live, New York audiences can tune in to 93.9 FM; the show is also streaming live at wnyc.org. The show starts at 12 PM ET, including an interview with filmmaker Errol Morris about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal; the Reich segment begins at 1:30 PM.

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Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD, plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

The Herald (UK): Steve Reich's "Drumming" Creates "Staggering Musical Experience" in Performance by Colin Currie

On Saturday night, a performance of Steve Reich's Drumming marked the culmination of percussionist Colin Currie's residency at the Horsecross Concert Hall in Perth, Scotland, and rated five stars in The Herald (Scotland). The paper's music critic Michael Tumelty says that the "mind-bogglingly virtuosic" musicians Currie gathered to perform the 1970-71 piece with him offered a "staggering musical experience" and "a stunning, dramatic version of Drumming." The event, concludes Tumelty, "was a tour de force for Currie, as organiser and player."

To read the complete review, visit theherald.co.uk.

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Click here to add the 1987 release of Drumming, by Steve Reich and Musicians, on CD plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14 .

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Below is information on just some of the many events going on this weekend across the globe featuring Nonesuch artists. Enjoy!

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Violinist Leila Josefowicz will join the Saint Louis Symphony, led by conductor Marin Alsop, for three performances of John Adams's The Dharma at Big Sur this weekend at Powell Hall in St. Louis. Also tonight, the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra led by Raymond Leppard will perform Adams's Violin Concerto at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao, Spain, featuring violinist Chlöe Hanslip, and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI led by Trevor Pinnock will perform the composer's 1990 orchestration of Liszt's The Black Gondola, in Turin, Italy.

Saturday night, the San Francisco Ballet presents the Mark Morris Dance Group's Joyride, featuring Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, as part of the continuing New Works Festival.

Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine gets three playings this weekend: Saturday night at the Saenger Theater in Mobile, Alabama, by Scott Speck and the Mobile Symphony, and Bloomington High School in Bloomington, Indiana, by Jose Valencia and the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra; and Sunday night at Royal Albert Hall, London, by Mark Gooding and the Harrow Young Musicians Philharmonic.

More information: boosey.com.

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Kronos Quartet plays the last of three performances at the Mondavi Center at the University of California, Davis, tonight: John Cage's Thirty Pieces for String Quartet with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Tickets: mondaviarts.org.

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Laurie Anderson will bring Homeland to the Moscow International Performing Arts Center in Russia on Saturday. On Sunday night, Laurie will join the weekend-long Symposium on Sound, a gathering of scientists, performers, and artists, at Leiden University in the Netherlands, for a discussion of the event's theme of mutual influence between art and science, especially as it relates to sound. Info: veenfabriek.nl.

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T Bone Burnett continues his tour with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss at New Orleans' famed Jazz & Heritage Festival, aka Jazz Fest. The three are scheduled to take the Acura Stage this afternoon at 3:30 PM. Next, they'll head to Birmingham, Alabama, where they'll play the BJCC Arena Saturday night. Tickets: nojazzfest.com (4/25); bjcc.org (4/26).

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Bill Frisell closes out his two week residency at New York's Village Vanguard with performances all weekend. Playing with Bill are Chris Cheek on sax, Ron Miles on trumpet, Tony Scherr on bass, and Rudy Royston on drums. Tickets: villagevanguard.com.

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Satyagraha, Philip Glass's 1980 opera centered around Mahatma Gandhi's early years in South Africa, continues tonight at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The performance is sold out. More information: metoperafamily.org.

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Richard Goode will perform a free concert in New York City as part of the annual Free for All at Town Hall concert series. See the post in today's Nonesuch Journal for more information.

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Emmylou Harris takes the stage at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in downtown Nashville tonight for Premiere Evening, an annual fund-raising event to benefit the Center's educational and cultural programming. Tickets: tpac.org.

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k.d. lang's continues the Australian leg of her Watershed tour at the Entertainment Center in Adelaide Saturday night. Tickets: theaec.net.

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Brad Mehldau is in Quebec, Canada, tonight for a solo show at the Palais Montcalm. He returns to the States on Saturday for a performance with the trio with whom he recorded the new album Live at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, and a Sunday night show at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theater in Philadelphia. Tickets: palaismontcalm.ca (4/25); hop.dartmouth.edu (4/26); pennpresents.org (4/27).

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Youssou N'Dour will perform a special benefit concert tonight at New York's intimate venue Joe's Pub as part of a fund-raising effort for the Youssou N'Dour Foundation and his worldwide advocacy efforts. The acoustic set will be modeled on the smaller sets he leads at his club in Dakar. Tickets: joespub.com.

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Randy Newman will play a solo date tonight at the Riley Center at Mississippi State University's Meridian Campus. Tickets: msurileycenter.com.

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Nicholas Payton stays close to home for New Orleans' Jazz Fest. He and his quintet will take the stage in the WWOZ Jazz Tent at 4:05 PM on Sunday. Among the other performers at this year's festival are Stevie Wonder and Al Green, as well as Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with T Bone Burnett (see above). Tickets: nojazzfest.com.

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Steve Reich's Eight Lines will be performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain led by Ludovic Morlot tonight at Cité de la musique, Salle des concerts, in Paris.

Reich's Desert Music, will presented at the University of California, Berkeley, Saturday, as Drumming will be performed by percussionist Colin Currie at the Concert Hall in Perth, Scotland. Currie earned four stars in the Herald (UK) for his performance there earlier this week of Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood that "mesmerised." Also Saturday, the Smith Quartet brings the Triple Quartet to the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building in Oxford, England.

On Sunday, Reich's Cello Counterpoint will be performed at the Purcell Room in London by Endymion and his Vermont Counterpoint can be heard at Ford Hall at Ithaca College, with Melissa Wertheimer on flute.

More information: boosey.com

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The national tour of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, based on the 2005 Broadway production helmed by John Doyle, began its run at Chicago's Cadillac Palace Theatre early this week. Performances continue there through May 4. Tickets: sweeneytoddtour.com

SF Classical Voice: Kronos's Latest Offers "Fantastic Journey" Through Riley's "Extraordinary" Piece

On the latest Nonesuch release from Kronos Quartet, the group offers the premiere recording of longtime collaborator Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic, taking the listener on a "fantastic journey," writes Jason Victor Serinus in San Francsico Classical Voice, through the 2004 piece, which Kronos commissioned in honor of the composer's 70th birthday.

"Peyote rituals, Chinese lullabies, Indian ragas, children's toys, sacred bonds, and secular madness all dance and swirl in ritualistic fashion in Terry Riley's extraordinary The Cusp of Magic," Serinus writes, from the opening first movement's "entry into the mystical" through the fourth movement, with its "passages of great rhythmic intensity," and the "ear-catching" fifth to "the irresistible rhythms and colors" of the last, ending "with an ecstatic flourish" that sounds to the reviewer like a resounding "Yes!"

To read the review, visit sfcv.org.

Kronos is currently in Davis, California, where they performed over two nights this past weekend at the UC Davis Mondavi Center, with programs featuring Steve Reich's Triple Quartet and John Adams's Fellow Traveler on Friday and works from the albums Requiem for a Dream, You've Stolen My Heart, and Nuevo, as well as their collaboration with Sigur Rós on Saturday. This coming Friday, Kronos will join the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Mondavi Center for a special "MinEvent," performing John Cage's Thirty Pieces for String Quartet. For more information, visit mondaviarts.org.

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Click here to add Kronos Quartet's The Cusp of Magic CD plus free album MP3s, with the exclusive bonus download "Tusen Tankar," directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $14.

Steve Reich "Double Sextet" Premiere Amazes the Ear (LA Times); "Daniel Variations" Proves "Powerful, Thoughtful, Loving" (Independent)

Double Sextet, a new work by Steve Reich, received its New York premiere last Thursday at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall by the new-music ensemble eighth blackbird, which went to show that the group "is now in another league," according to the New York Times. Reviewer Allan Kozinn says that the "vigorous" new piece "begins with Mr. Reich's signature chugging rhythms but quickly moves a fair distance, as intricate rhythmic counterpoint and thickening harmonies displace the repetitive opening figure."

Following the piece's West Coast premiere last Tuesday, at the Orange County Performing Artscenter, the Los Angeles Times Music Critic Mark Swed wrote that Double Sextet, with its interplay between pre-recorded music and the live performance, creates "the kind of explosion of fractured rhythms that never ceases to amaze the ear." Swed continues:

Musicians, forced to keep count as though their lives depend on it, typically treat Reich's music as a left-brain activity. But the left brain can't hold all that music, and for listeners, all those fractured rhythms spill over onto the right side, where there is room for spatial perception. A really good performance, then, feels like a barely controlled explosion between your ears.

Tuesday's was a really good, rocking, rollicking performance.

For the New York performance review, visit nytimes.com; for Swed's review, visit latimes.com.

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The latest recording from Steve Reich, Daniel Variations, was released on Nonesuch earlier this month. The Financial Times' Andrew Clark calls the album's title piece "a meditative requiem" on the slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and credits the Los Angeles Master Chorale, led by Grant Gershon, with making "splendid sense" of the work. Paired with that piece on the recording is Reich's Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings, from 2005, about which, Clark writes, "Reich fans should be well pleased, especially given a performance, by the London Sinfonietta under [Alan] Pierson, as lively and precise as this." To read the review, visit ft.com.

The Observer's Anthony Holden calls Daniel Variations "haunting" and the Observer Music Monthly's Mike Barnes finds it "restlessly syncopated with woodwind, percussion, vibes and pianos examining each theme from a number of angles. The piece moves from a brooding introduction to a sublime denouement ..." For more, visit music.guardian.co.uk.

In the Independent on Sunday, reviewer Anna Picard also points to the piece's restlessness, finding it "propelled by darting vibes and dancing violins" that proves to be "a powerful,thoughtful, loving piece." She also compliments the London Sinfonietta for its performance of the second piece, which she calls "a work of classically Reichian dazzled ecstasy." For that review, visit independent.co.uk.

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Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD, plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

eighth blackbird to Give Steve Reich's "Double Sextet" NY Premiere Tonight at Carnegie Hall

Tonight, in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, Steve Reich's Double Sextet will be given its New York premiere by the Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird. The group performed the world premiere late last month at the University of Richmond, where the ensemble is in residence and which co-commissioned the work along with Carnegie Hall and the Orange County Performing Arts Center; earlier this week, eighth blackbird played Double Sextet at the Samueli Theater in Orange County, California.

Of the premiere performance in Richmond, the Washington Post's Anne Midgette wrote that "the players, live and recorded, create layer upon layer of sound, a rich mille-feuille of music, while pinwheeling light-images create visual parallels on the wall behind them." She had this to say about the new piece:

Double Sextet is obviously in the tradition of his other live/taped pieces, such as New York Counterpoint. But in this piece, his rhythmic patterns became a background against which he held up chords as if examining them under the light, replacing his characteristic spareness with something verging on melodic richness ...

To read the review, visit washingtonpost.com.

Following this past Tuesday's performance at the Samueli Theater in Costa Mesa, the Orange County Register calls the new work "vintage Reich," with reviewer Paul Bodine writing:

Reich, now 71, has been labeled as a "minimalist" for so long that even now that he's called "America's greatest living composer" it's hard for some to acknowledge how significant his early breakthroughs with phased, contrapuntal compositions really were or how creatively he has continued to reinvent his style.

Bodine says of Double Sextet that "while Reich's instrumentation was traditional, the effect was anything but." To read the review, visit ocregister.com.

Tonight's concert in Zankel Hall, which begins at 7:30 PM, will be preceded, at 6:30, by a discussion with the composer, members of the ensemble, and Ara Guzelimian, Provost and Dean of The Juilliard School; it is open to concert ticketholders.

Also on the concert program is the New York premiere of singing in the dead of night by the founding members of Bang on a Can---David Lang (a recent Pulitzer Prize winner), Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolf---with stage direction by Susan Marshall.

For more information and to read the program notes by the composers, visit carnegiehall.org.

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Click here to add Steve Reich's latest Nonesuch release, Daniel Variations, as CD+MP3s directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Steve Reich's "Daniel Variations" Featured on WNYC's "New Sounds"

Steve Reich's Daniel Variations was the featured album on last night's episode of New Sounds on WNYC, 93.9 FM, now available in full on wnyc.org.

The album's title piece, written in memory of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, "justifiably has drawn a fair amount of attention and acclaim," says the show's host, John Schaefer. Yet also on the disc is "a piece that's too good to overlook," declares Schaefer: Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings. Schaefer plays that piece in its entirety, closing the show with an excerpt from Daniel Variations.

Between the two new Reich recordings, New Sounds features a seminal early work by John Adams: Shaker Loops, "the work that really announced his presence on the new music scene," in Schaefer's words. The piece, first written in 1978 and revised for string orchestra in 1983, is performed on this recording, from 1996, by the Orchestra of St. Luke's, conducted by the composer.

You can listen to the entire program on wnyc.org.

Daniel Variations, which the Sydney Morning Herald calls "a powerful composition," will receive its Australian premiere this Friday at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

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Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD+MP3s directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

All About Jazz: "Cusp of Magic" Proves Kronos/Riley Pairing "A Truly Rare Musical Symbiosis"

"Few string quartets on the scene today are as intrepid as Kronos in the exploration of unconventional form and methods to extend the reach of a centuries-old instrumental configuration," writes John Kelman in his All About Jazz review of the Quartet’s latest release, The Cusp of Magic, composed for the group by its frequent collaborator Terry Riley. "Few composers possess a body of work defined by such a rich palette of references as Riley," Kelman continues. "It's no surprise, then," he concludes, "that Kronos and Riley have collaborated so often and so well, with The Cusp of Magic providing further evidence of a truly rare musical symbiosis."

To read the complete review, visit allaboutjazz.com.

Kronos will perform at the Modavi Center at UC Davis this Friday at 8 PM, in a program featuring Steve Reich's Triple Quartet and John Adams's Fellow Traveler, as well as works by newer collaborators: composers whose works the Quartet commissioned as part of its "Under 30 Project" for musicians under the age of 30.

Kronos returns to the Center the following Friday for a performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company of John Cage's Thirty Pieces for String Quartet.

For more program information, visit kronosquartet.org.

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Click here to add Kronos Quartet's The Cusp of Magic CD plus free album MP3s, with the exclusive bonus download "Tusen Tankar," directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $14.

Steve Reich's "Daniel Variations," Catalog Available Now at Nonesuch.com As CD+MP3s

Steve Reich's latest album, Daniel Variations, receives four stars from The Guardian (UK), whose Andrew Clements writes of the title piece: "From the very first uneasy chord it is very obviously a searching, serious piece and, I think, one of Reich's major statements."

Daniel Variations is now available in the Nonesuch Store with the exclusive bonus download, Dance Patterns, which received its world premiere in a performance by Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and her Rosas Dance Company in 2003.

Also available now in the Nonesuch Store is the composer's entire Nonesuch catalog of single-disc albums as the CD-with-free-album-MP3 package. To see the full Steve Reich discography, click here.

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Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD+MP3s directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Steve Reich's "Daniel Variations" to Be Performed at 2008 Bang on a Can NY Marathon

Bang on a Can has announced the schedule for this year's Bang on a Can Marathon and a preliminary listing of the program. A performance of Steve Reich's Daniel Variations, by Signal ensemble, will be a highlight of the 12-hour event, to be held at New York's World Financial Center Winter Garden from 6 PM on May 31 though 6 AM on June 1. Also slated are works by John Adams, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, and many others, including Alarm Will Sound's take on the Beatles' Revolution No. 9. For more information, visit bangonacan.org.

To listen to the first movement off Daniel Variations, in stores now, visit nonesuch.com/stevereich.

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Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD directly to your Shopping Cart now for $14 with the album MP3s at no extra cost, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Metro (UK) Gives Five Stars to Reich's "Remarkable" "Daniel Variations"

Steve Reich's latest Nonesuch release, Daniel Variations, will be in stores tomorrow, and the Metro (UK) gives the album five stars, calling it "remarkable."

MusicOMH, also out of the UK, gives the album four stars, with reviewer Ben Hogwood calling the title piece "the most vital of Reich's recent works," suggesting it marks "a new stylistic phase" for the composer. The work's variations, writes Hogwood "contain music of an emotional power and anguish rarely glimpsed in the composer's output." And on the performance by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, captured on this album, "the words carry a latent power matched by the music." Read the complete review at musicomh.com.

You can listen to the second movement from Daniel Variations, "My name is Daniel Pearl (I'm a Jewish American from Encino, California" and the first movement of Variations for Vibes and Strings, also on the album, at nonesuch.com/stevereich. You can also watch an interview the composer gave to BBC News for the world premiere of Daniel Variations at the Barbican in London in 2006.

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Click here to pre-order the Daniel Variations CD now for $14 and receive the album MP3s at no extra cost on release day, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Austin360: Steve Reich SxSW Showcase "A Hit"

Steve Reich's music was a focal point of the South by Southwest festival's first-ever classical music showcase, Reich, Rags, & Road Movies: Music by Steve Reich & Friends, Wednesday night. Austin360's local music-scene blog, "Music Source," says it was "a hit." Randy Harriman reports from the show that the packed house "responded enthusiastically."

The first half of the program included John Adams's Road Movies; works by Michael Torke and Elliott Carter; and Reich's New York Counterpoint, performed by the San Antonio-based SOLI chamber ensemble. The second half was devoted entirely to Reich's music, with a performance of Electric Counterpoint by guitarist C. E. Whalen and four pieces played by New York's So Percussion ensemble: Music for Pieces of Wood, Nagoya Marimbas, Drumming, and Clapping Music. Writes Harriman:

The highlights of the evening had to be the Reich pieces played by So Percussion. Who would have thought that sticks and human hands could move at the speed of hummingbird wings---literally turning into blurs, from which emerged amazing sounds?

To read the full report, visit austin360.com.

The Wall Street Journal's music critic Jim Fusilli reports from Austin as well, speaking with Reich about his forthcoming Nonesuch CD, Daniel Variations, due out April 8. To read the details of their discussion, visit blogs.wsj.com/sxsw.

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Click here to pre-order the Daniel Variations CD now for $14 and receive the album MP3s at no extra cost on release day, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Glenn Kotche Plays Works from "Mobile" at NYC's The Kitchen

Glenn Kotche is in New York City for two sets, tonight and tomorrow night, with The National's Bryce Dessner at the famed downtown performance venue The Kitchen, before heading to Australia next week to join Wilco for a number of tour dates there and in New Zealand.

At The Kitchen, Glenn will perform works from his Nonesuch solo album, Mobile, and adaptations from Anomaly, a piece he wrote for and premiered with Kronos Quartet at the San Francisco Jazz Festival last October. He'll also play new arrangements of works by João Gilberto, Buddy Holly, and label mate Steve Reich. Each set begins at 8 PM. For more information, visit thekitchen.org.

Steve Reich, John Adams Music in SXSW Showcase

Steve Reich and John Adams will be among the composers whose works will be featured in the first-ever South by Southwest (SXSW) festival showcase presented by the classical and jazz music publisher Boosey & Hawkes.

The showcase, titled Reich, Rags, & Road Movies: Music by Steve Reich & Friends, will take place tonight at Austin's St. David's Episcopal Church (304 East 7th Street at San Jacinto Blvd.), from 9-11 PM, with Reich as the guest of honor. The program will include a performance of Adams's Road Movies by pianist Michelle Schumann of the Austin Chamber Music Center and violinist Ertan Torgu; Reich's New York Counterpoint by San Antonio's SOLI chamber ensemble, Electric Counterpoint (originally written for Pat Metheny) by guitarist C. E. Whalen, and Music for Pieces of Wood, Nagoya Marimbas, Drumming, and Clapping Music by So Percussion; as well as works by Michael Torke and Elliott Carter. For complete program and ticket information, click here.

Steve Reich will also participate in a discussion with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore tomorrow at 1:15 PM at the Austin Convention Center. For more information, click here.

Reich's latest Nonesuch release, Daniel Variations, is set for release on April 8.

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Click here to pre-order the Daniel Variations CD now for $14 and receive the album MP3s at no extra cost on release day, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Austin Hosts SxSW with Steve Reich, Black Keys; Follows with "The Wire" Creator, David Simon

Thousands of music, film, and new-media types from across the world are converging on Austin, Texas, this week for the 2008 South by Southwest Festival. Among the participating artists will be Steve Reich, whose music will be performed with that of John Adams's at a showcase tomorrow night, and who will join Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore for a discussion the following afternoon; and The Black Keys, who will perform late-night tomorrow and at the Village Voice party on Friday.

And next week, Austin keeps things interesting even after the festival-goers depart. The University of Texas's College of Communication will present David Simon, the creator of HBO's The Wire, who will deliver the 2008 William Randolph Hearst Fellow lecture there on Tuesday, March 18, at 6 PM. The William Randolph Hearst Fellow Award honors individuals with distinguished careers in communication; former Fellows include Helen Gurley Brown, Walter Cronkite, Spike Lee, and Dan Rather. The free event will be held at the Austin City Limits studio on campus and is open to the public. For more information, visit utexas.edu.

Fans of The Wire are still coming to grips with the fact that there are no new episodes left to look forward to. Writing in McSweeney's, über-fan Scott Blaszak tells of his humorous, fictionalized (one hopes) efforts to encourage his nearest and dearest to catch the series finale, suggesting extreme (and perhaps extralegal) measures to spread the good word about "the smartest, most resonant drama in the history of television." Even for those who've missed the show, now's a good time to catch up on seasons one through four on DVD and prepare for the release of the fifth season on DVD while listening to the show's soundtracks.

And for those who are fully caught up through the end, Chicago Tribune's television critic Maureen Ryan has a loving and thorough run-through of her favorite moments from all five seasons. Countless fans are sure to share her sentiment when she concludes:

From the mayor's office to the police department to the grungiest back alley, The Wire showed us people so richly nuanced and detailed and real we wouldn't be surprised to meet them in the street. After five seasons, it's exceedingly hard to let them go.

To read the article, visit featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com.

Greenwood's "There Will Be Blood" Makes Alex Ross's "Soundtrack to the City"

On the same day Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic, enjoyed the Stephen Colbert treatment as a guest on the Colbert Report, Gothamist published an interview with Ross, in which he discusses his new book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century.

In the interview, Ross is asked what he would recommend to someone just learning to explore classical music. To get the full experience suggests both attending a live concert and buying a few representative CDs, including Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's album of Bach cantatas, BWV 82 and 199, and Steve Reich and Musicians playing Reich's Music for 18 Musicians.

As for his current "soundtrack to the city," Ross cites two film scores: Jonny Greenwood's There Will Be Blood and Philip Glass's Koyaanisqatsi.

To read the interview, visit gothamist.com. To read more of what Alex Ross has to say about Greenwood's score, click here.

Celebrating the Multiplicity of Modern Music

Just in time for this month's multi-dimensional Sydney Festival of music, dance, theatre, and more, the Sydney Morning Herald recently reprinted an essay by composer Nico Muhly published last fall in the Guardian, asserting that the cross-pollination between pop/rock and contemporary classical music needn't resort to anything as metaphorically contorted as the bending, breaking, or busting of genres at all. Rather, writes Muhly: "The best sort of interchange between experimental classical music and experimental rock and pop consists of a shared dialogue with the goal of making music."

Muhly points to the era of compositional experimentation of the '60s and '70s by leading figures like Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Terry Riley as purveyors of "the productive intersection between notated and non-notated music" that would soon spread beyond the "classical" world. In the work of this vanguard could be seen "classically trained composers relinquishing control, backing off of the laser-like precision of Stravinskian detail and replacing it with a type of communal music-making more commonly found in rock bands."

Citing artists like Radiohead, Björk, and Sufjan Stevens (the latter two contributors to the Nonesuch Tribute to Joni Mitchell) as the heirs to this new mode of composition, Muhly points, among other things, to Björk's inclusion of the pipa on her latest release, Volta, not as some simplistic East-West "fusion" but rather as just one more component in her expansive creative palette. (Similarly, pioneering composer Terry Riley's Cusp of Magic, written for Kronos Quartet and pipa virtuoso Wu Man, brings together Chinese lullabies and digital audio samples of musical toys, so that, in the composer's words, "Western musical themes might be projected with an Eastern accent and vice-versa." Nonesuch will release the Kronos/Wu Man recording of the piece, pictured above right, on February 5.)

In Stevens's case, the singer-songwriter "makes active references to the American minimal tradition (Reich, Glass, Adams) in his music." His breakout album Illinois even includes a lengthy musical reference "lifted almost directly from Adams's Common Tones in Simple Time," writes Muhly. "But, Stevens has a more complicated compositional process than just borrowing." Referencing "an incredibly successful moment" in one song, Muhly says "it works because Stevens has harnessed his minimalist pattern-based energies and sent them straight up from the earth to the sky."

For Muhly, the emotional core is precisely where musical cross-pollination should begin, writing that it

is best achieved when it bypasses thought and operates through the nervous system, the spine and the fingertips ... Modern musicians can pick and choose what goes into their music. The literal crossing-over is already done. It is simply a matter of a making a plan and not giving it a name except your own.

To read the complete article, visit smh.com.au or arts.guardian.co.uk.

Black Keys to Play South by Southwest 2008

The Black Keys join label mate Steve Reich on the roster for this year's South by Southwest conference, which will be held March 12-16 in Austin, Texas. For the band, their performance marks the start of a tour in support of their forthcoming Nonesuch release. Reich will be speaking at the conference with Sonic Youth front man Thurston Moore.

For more information, visit billboard.com or go to the conference website at 2008.sxsw.com/music.

Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" on Sufjan Steven's Top Five

Sufjan Stevens, when asked at the PENultimate Lit event last night in Park Slope, Brooklyn, to name his top five albums of all time, named just one: Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. The event was organized by the PEN American Center to examine the intersection of literature and the arts; hosted by Rick Moody, it featured a Q&A with Sufjan and fellow writer/singer-songwriter Wesley Stace (aka John Wesley Harding), as well as a performance by each. The "top five albums" que