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Steve Reich – Double Sextet played at Le Poisson Rouge
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2009/06/steve_reichs_double_sextet_bro.html
Star-Ledger Article:
When Steve Reich won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in April, many called the award long overdue. Given his revolutionary body of work, it’s hard to argue. But when the new music group Signal performed the winning composition “Double Sextet” at Le Poisson Rouge Monday night, both the piece itself and the sense of lifetime achievement came through in full glory.
To open the celebratory concert, which the composer attended, Signal, led by conductor Brad Lubman, performed what could be considered the work’s predecessor, “Sextet,” written in 1984. Scored by Reich (no relation to this reporter) for four percussionists and two keyboardists, the work features such sounds as electric pianos, bowed vibraphones, marimba, click sticks and crotales. The composer’s trademark layered contrapuntal textures, played with precision and direction, gave the impression of driving rhythmic patterns bouncing against one another.
Le Poisson Rouge, the Greenwich Village club that curates an eclectic blend of classical, indie rock and other genres with an emphasis on new music, recently celebrated its first anniversary. At least in its classical programming, it has been both strikingly consistent and consistently striking, and the relaxed atmosphere, complete with a bar, seems to be a successful model. With many concert halls struggling, it would be interesting to see how a larger work than the chamber music and recitals typically performed here might fare in such a setting.
Hearing Reich’s pieces in such close proximity enhanced the newer work’s broad scope and the raw, human qualities that could be taken on by the strings and winds — instruments absent from many of the composer’s earlier works. “Double Sextet” calls for two ensembles of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion to be played either by 12 musicians, as it was by Signal, or by six playing against a recording of themselves. That is how the piece, which Reich wrote in 2007 and premiered in 2008, was first performed by the new music-ensemble eighth blackbird.
Here is a youtube video of them in the studio recording double sextet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IqVnvkzvNQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Rji3yhRs8