Reich: Winnipeg Symphony Residency
American composer Steve Reich featured as Distinguished Guest Composer at Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s annual New Music Festival
The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s 2013 New Music Festival, one of Canada’s most important contemporary music events, will be focused on the groundbreaking music of American composer Steve Reich. This year’s showcase, January 28–February 2, 2013, will include eight works by the celebrated American composer, who has been named Distinguished Guest Composer, including iconic works such as New York Counterpoint and Different Trains, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet.
The festival’s first concert with Reich’s music is January 30, featuring a performance of Vermont Counterpoint by the University of Manitoba’s Flute Ensemble This seminal work, dating back to 1982, features many of Reich’s signature compositional techniques. The following evening brings a concentrated focus on Reich’s chamber music, with performances of Clapping Music, Different Trains, and New York Counterpoint. Double Sextet is also presented, this time with new choreography danced by members of Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet. The concluding concerts of the series offer Reich’s most celebrated works for ensemble and voice with the spiritual Tehillim, based on biblical Psalms and Hebrew text and The Desert Music, a work based on poems by William Carlos Williams.
Next up for Reich is the world premiere of Radio Rewrite, a new piece inspired by the music of iconic rock band Radiohead and commissioned by the London Sinfonietta and Alarm Will Sound. The first performance takes place at London’s Southbank Centre on March 5, followed by the first American performance on March 16 at Stanford University.
> More information on Steve Reich
> Click here to watch a special video on the composer: “Reich on Reich”
Photo: Jeffrey Herman
