Thursday, 30 May 2013

My Name is.....

I've been a big fan of Steve Reich for many years now & consider him to be the most important & best composer of the last 50 years. I've many recording of his work. But yesterday was the first time I'd heard his 1967 piece "My Name Is".
The new music outfit Powerplant has just released the first commercially available recording of the piece! A 10 minute version on their album "24 Lies Per Second".
This is one of a very few conceptual pieces by Reich. The idea is to record audience members say "My Name is Steve", or "My Name is Phillip", or "My Name is Terry" or whatever, using 3 tape machines & then play them back to create the same effect as on Reich's more famous tape pieces like "It's Gonna Rain".
It's not greatly different in effect or style, but it is nice to hear it at last.



1 comment:

  1. Never heard this. And I don't recall it being performed at the Almeida's celebrated Reich at 50 festival back in the 80s when supposedly ALL his works were performed, including Pendulum Music etc. Music for 18 Musicians is certainly in my Top 10 pieces of music of all time.

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