Sunday 24 May

Steve Reich
^{b 1936}

Steve Reich was recently called ‘our greatest living composer’ (The New York Times), and ‘the most original musical thinker of our time’ (The New Yorker). From his early taped speech pieces in the 1960s, his path has embraced not only aspects of Western classical music, but the structures, harmonies and rhythms of non-Western and American vernacular music, particularly jazz.

Born in New York and raised between there and California, Reich studied philosophy before moving on to studying composition. During the summer of 1970, he studied drumming at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana and went on to study Balinese Gamelan and the traditional forms of cantillation (chanting) of the Hebrew scriptures in New York and Jerusalem. In 1966 Reich founded his own ensemble of three musicians, which rapidly grew to 18 members and more. Since 1971, Steve Reich and Musicians have frequently toured the world. His 1988 piece Different Trains marked a new compositional method in which speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments.

Steve Reich’s music has been performed by major orchestras and ensembles around the world, including the LSO, New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony. In October 2006 in Tokyo, Steve Reich was awarded the Praemium Imperiale award in Music. This important international award covers areas in the arts not covered by the Nobel Prize. In May 2007 he was awarded The Polar Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of music. In April 2009 he was awarded the Pulitzer prize in Music for his composition Double Sextet.

LSO Percussion Ensemble

The LSO Percussion Ensemble comprises members of the London Symphony Orchestra’s percussion section as well as distinguished orchestral players with enviable reputations. If you are a classical music lover, you will have heard them on countless LSO recordings, as well as in the concert hall. The Ensemble enjoys an international following and embarked on a tour of Japan in 2018.

Their highly successful recording of music by Steve Reich for LSO Live has become the best-selling physical product on the label in the United States. Critics have been quick to praise this album with rave reviews. ‘The LSO percussion’s performance of Sextet builds up in energy and momentum to a quite thrilling climax.’ (Gramophone) ‘A wonderfully transparent weave through which the bowed vibe notes shine like rays of light through water.’ (BBC Music Magazine) ‘The performances and the recorded sound are so outstanding … unreservedly recommended.’ (HR Audio)

If you are a film buff, you will have heard these same players on the soundtracks of Star Wars, Harry Potter, Braveheart, Notting Hill, The Shape of Water, and hundreds more movies to which the LSO has provided the music.

The LSO Percussion Ensemble’s live performance of Music for Pieces of Wood has also been licensed for use in season eight of AMC’s Walking Dead. All this takes place within the context of performing 70 Barbican concerts a year as members of the London Symphony Orchestra, and almost the same number of concerts touring with the LSO around the world each year, with eminent conductors such as Bernard Haitink, Sir Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra’s Music Director Sir Simon Rattle.

The London Symphony Orchestra was established in 1904 and has a unique ethos. As a musical collective, it is built on artistic ownership and partnership. With an inimitable signature sound, the LSO’s mission is to bring the greatest music to the greatest number of people.

The LSO has been the only Resident Orchestra at the Barbican Centre in the City of London since it opened in 1982, giving 70 symphonic concerts there every year. The Orchestra works with a family of artists that includes some of the world’s greatest conductors – Sir Simon Rattle as Music Director, Principal Guest Conductors Gianandrea Noseda and François-Xavier Roth, and Michael Tilson Thomas as Conductor Laureate.

Through LSO Discovery, it is a pioneer of music education, offering musical experiences to 60,000 people every year at its music education centre LSO St Luke’s on Old Street, across East London and further afield.

The LSO strives to embrace new digital technologies in order to broaden its reach, and with the formation of its own record label LSO Live in 1999 it pioneered a revolution in recording live orchestral music. With a discography spanning many genres and including some of the most iconic recordings ever made the LSO is now the most recorded and listened to orchestra in the world, regularly reaching over 3,500,000 people worldwide each month on Spotify and beyond. The Orchestra continues to innovate through partnerships with market-leading tech companies, as well as initiatives such as LSO Play. The LSO is a highly successful creative enterprise, with 80% of all funding self-generated.