I got to see The Cave and Remixing Reich at the Barbican last week. They were part of a week long festival dedicated to the music of Steve Reich. This was my first serious introduction to Reich’s phenominal body of work but despite only seeing two performances, it’s easy to see why he’s such a highly regarded composer.

The Cave, his multimedia opera, was truely incredible.

In 1993, Reich collaborated with his wife, the video artist Beryl Korot, on an opera, The Cave, which explores the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam through the words of Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans, echoed musically by the ensemble. The work, for percussion, voices, and strings, is a musical documentary, named for the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, where a mosque now stands and Abraham is said to have been buried.

It’s the story of Abraham, the forefather of these three major religions, told from three very different, sometimes conflicting, perspectives. The beauty of it is that no one particular media acts as the primary medium for the story. Video, text, voice and the ensemble combine to form a rich tapestry, relecting the multifaceted nature each perspective. It’s a performance I think Marshall McLuhan would have much to say about.

Remixing Reich featuring Steve Reich & Musicians, Coldcut, DJ Spooky, Kronos Quartet and Konono totally blew my mind! For the first act Steve Reich performed Drumming, a 90-minute piece for a 9-piece percussion. This Amazon review describes it best:

This hour-plus piece of music is based upon a single, measure-long rhythmic fragment which lasts perhaps two seconds, but when played out-of-phase with itself generates an incredible variety of “emergent” patterns. Scored for various percussion (bongos, maribas, glockenspiel), voice, and whistle, listeners get to hear how these instruments create new emergent melodies on the fragment through the percussions’ differing harmonic profiles. This is a great example of process music, and may put you in a trance. It rewards both close and relaxed listening (when one’s attention is diverted then re-trained, missing one’s “place” in the relentless, driving pulse, it sounds like a differently-arranged piece!)

For the second act it was over to the remixers, DJ Spooky and Coldcut. Their remixes of Reich feature on the compilation Reich Remixed which is definately something I need to add to my record collection. Seeing their performances live though was really special. DJ Spooky performed a remix of Reich’s City Life with the Kronos Quartet, sampling them live to amazing effect.

As big a fan of electronica as I am, I must say that electronica live makes for a boring performance and in the case of Coldcut, it can be down right disasterous. They ran into technical issues during their performance and it all basically turned to custard. Forunately for them they we performing with a group of musicians who saved them from what would have been deafing silence (or a new remix of 4′ 33″)!

All in all though, an inspirational set of performances…