Small Town College Does Great: Taking on New Music and Winning!

See story here: Steve Reich: 'Music for 18 (Cornfed) Musicians' : NPR

I had heard about this, but hearing this NPR piece about the story really was wonderful. A small Midwestern college decided to try to learn an INCREDIBLY complex, demanding new music piece entitled **Music for 18 Musicians ** by Steve Reich from about 1970. It is a pulsing, textured piece where patterns are created and thrust against each other leading to emerging and fading waves of sound and convergence. It sounds digital, but it is performed by regular symphonic instruments, but the metronomic precision on both an absolute scale and communicating with your fellow players is legendarily taxing.

But not for Grand Valley State University! They took it on and performed it at one of the most prestigious New Music festivals, Bang on a Can in New York City. And came away wholly triumphant - critical praise from all corners.

Yay them! The ultimate movie plot sense in the dangerous world of invitational minimalist music symposia - okay, it isn’t Rudy or Hoosiers, but still!! :slight_smile:

Hope you enjoy it.

Wow, what a story! I’ve never heard of this piece, but the clip on the NPR site of Grand Valley State’s performance was really great. Yay them indeed!

Gun in mouth; pull trigger.

Umm … I’ve never heard of it either. Is it really famous or something?

thwartme

Steve Reich is reasonably well-known for complex experimental music. I’m not sure if it was the excerpt that made you want to shoot yourself, or that you did not know this, but who am I to argue with you?

The fact that apparently nobody knows Reich or this piece, when both should be a household name. Related thread: Why are people so much less cultured these days?

Who cares? Your average person hadn’t heard of the piano piece nicknamed “Rach 3” before the movie Shine brought it to more common awareness. That’s not the point, and I’d rathter this thread didn’t get off track this way. IT’s a cool story.

What I find funny is that my brother and I have a fundamental disagreement on music. He likes Reich (and similar composers) and I like trance. I don’t mind Reich and similar composers (though themes have a tendency to develop too slowly for my taste in those works) but he absolutely hates all electronic music. I guess I don’t see how he can like Reich and hate all trance.

Anyway, I’m very impressed. If Grand Valley State is anything like where I went to college, even more so. We had a music department but there was not a music major, so all of the students who were involved in music in one form or another were all non-majors taking it (or even just showing up without even auditing) for fun. Sure, we could fulfill a distribution requirement that way too, but mostly we all did it because we enjoyed playing music. I have to believe that those pieces are demanding for professionals, so a small college group, especially if it was non-majors, really impresses me.

Yet another reason for me to be absolutely proud to be a GVSU alum. I love my university. Thanks for posting that!

Ok. . . if I were to give Steve Reich’s compositions a listen, where would I start? Suggestions?

Actually, we have a pretty good music department. I mean, it certainly isn’t a main draw to the school, but we have a few different music majors offered (performance, education, composition). If all of those players weren’t music majors, I would be deeply, deeply surprised. For a size point of reference, Grand Valley is teetering on the edge of becoming a Division 1 school, and our academic standards are pretty freaking high.

I’ll stop bragging now. Sorry about all that.

An approachable Reich record is Tehillim, which came out in the eighties, and might not be available on CD. Worth looking for, IMO.

Honestly, this piece - Music for 18 Musicians. I just let the music wash over me.

And you gotta love the Dope - thanks for the insider view Ro Carter!

Oh, one thing: I go to a lot of trouble in the OP to describe how hard and complex this piece is. That’s from the ***player’s * ** perspective - to me, that is completely different from a listener’s perspective.

  • From a player’s perspective, you are playing a precise pattern that grows in complexity. Imagine doing super-precise, super-fast evolving scales practice - in a group and making it musical. I have heard that players describe playing it as trance-like and I buy that completely.

  • From a listener’s perspective, it just sounds and feels cool. Kinda like little droplets of water are pulsing over you in different patterns or something. I am not a synaesthete (where you process one sensory input via another sense) but this music is very easy to visualize in constantly changing, fascinating geometric patterns. Very accessible.

[Moderator-speak]TLD&c, I’m not sure exactly what you mean by this, but I don’t like it. If you’re intending it as a death threat, it’s a violation of our rules for the Message Board. If you’re intending is as an insult to The Real Thing, then it’s a violation of our rules in this forum.

It is possible for someone not to have yet been exposed to every piece of music in existence, without the need for you to make derogatory comments about them or about the situation.

Cool it.

Dex, that’s why I linked to my own thread - the intended joke was that I was putting the gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger due to disappointment with people not knowing Reich. Sorry for the confusion.