Work off that Thanksgiving dinner by grooving with Steve Reich's epic piece of phasing experimentation: Drumming. This performance from our 2021 season makes use of unique videography to create a truly transcendental experience!

While supporting himself as a taxi driver in San Francisco in the 1960s, Steve Reich experimented with compositional techniques based on tape loops and repetitive cycles, helping to give rise to a transformative new style that has been dubbed “minimalism.” After a landmark series of tape pieces, he created one of his first significant works for acoustic instruments, Piano Phase, in which two pianists play repeating patterns that gradually fall out of sync with each other.

Following a life-changing visit to Ghana, Reich’s experiments with phasing culminated in Drumming from 1970-71, a work of unprecedented scope that foreshadowed his large ensemble masterpieces from later in the decade, including Music for 18 Musicians. In Part I, a single measure of rhythmic material provides all the raw material needed to elaborate a continuous structure for four pairs of tuned bongos that can stretch to 20 minutes. As the players slip into different rhythmic alignments, the tonal differences between the high and low bongos create the perception of a shape-shifting melody that disintegrates and re-emerges time and again.

-- © 2021 Aaron Grad

Originally performed April 24, 2021.