Steve Reich 85!

The American composer Steve Reich found a new idiom by also casting his light outside the boundaries of classical music. He turns 85, and that alone is reason enough for a complete ReichMatinee.

Reich in the classical canon
There are composers who work like photographers: creating a lot of material and letting posterity choose the best works. Not so Steve Reich: every work that he has made since the sixties has been shot in the right direction and has meanwhile found its place in the classical canon. In his key work Music for 18 Musicians, he combined his experiences with Ghanaian Ewe drummers with a newly found harmonic language, and in Tehillim he found the melody in his music, and his Jewish roots in his life.

World premiere
Reich's new work Traveler's Prayer, which he composed in coronation time at the request of the Saturday Matinee and others, takes its title from the Jewish prayer book. "One of the reasons for writing this work is that I am 83 years old," says Reich. "The journey, of course, could be from New York to California, but also from this life to the next. Whatever that may be."

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