Pulse (2015) is performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble
(ICE)—an artist collective committed to transforming the way music is created
and experienced—and Quartet (2013) is played by the Colin Currie Group, an
ensemble led by percussionist Colin Currie that
specializes in the music of Steve Reich; these are also the ensembles that gave
the world premiere performances of the respective works.
Steve Reich has been called “our greatest living composer” (New York
Times) and “the most original musical thinker of our time” (New Yorker). His
path has embraced not only Western Classical music, but the structures,
harmonies, and rhythms of non-Western and American
vernacular music, particularly jazz. “There's just a handful of living
composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical
history and Steve Reich is one of them,” states the Guardian. In April
2009 Steve Reich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition
Double Sextet.
