Steve Reich 90th birthday concert, Oct 22 2026
I heard an all-Steve Reich concert at Carnegie Hall on Oct 22, 2026. It was part of the festivities celebrating his 90th birthday. I've been a Reich fan for years, especially after hearing his piece "Drumming" at BAM in 2014, one of the most exciting pieces of music I've heard in my life. I knew I wanted to be there.
The performers were Bang On a Can All-Stars and Ensemble Signal, conducted by Brad Lubman. Also three special soloists in the first half.
There were five pieces on the program - - one early-ish, one somewhat old, the other three quite new. They started with the oldest piece, "Electric Counterpoint" (1987) for electric guitar playing "against" (Reich's choice of verb) a recording of the same player playing electric guitar and bass. Played by Bryce Dessner. It started with a peaceful, thrumming vibe. It was impossible for me, at first, to distinguish between what was being played live and what was on the recording. Then a live solo line pealed through, bubbled up to the top.
The texture thinned out a couple of minutes into the piece and it became a pattern of the live guitarist playing two notes and the recorded guitar playing a different two notes, these lines working in counterpoint with each other. Then one of them was altered slightly, then the other, then a third voice added. This type of development is one of Reich's specialties, something also done by Philip Glass. Glass is often mentioned in the same breath as Reich, along with John Adams and Terry Riley. They're grouped together as The Minimalists, they all came to prominence in the 80s. They all have a love for repetition and slight changes to create new patterns. Their music is also often more complex rhythmically than harmonically or melodically. I hardly know Riley at all but I'll say that of the other three, Reich is both the most intellectually stimulating and the most exciting. His music often makes me giddy and short of breath. The construction is such absolute genius. Many pieces on this program had me on the brink of laughter. I'm more accustomed to music bringing me to the brink of tears!
Anyway, back to the electric guitar piece. The classic Reich development section went on for a while, until there were maybe five different layers of electric guitars playing in counterpoint. Then the recorded bass guitar came in and the whole thing went AHHH... Maybe my favorite moment in the concert.
The piece was nearing its end and the live guitarist played chords for the first time - - we'd only heard individual notes up to that point. This gave a fascinating new flavor to the piece and also somehow signaled that it was nearing its end. He finished and the audience applauded like mad, brought him back for a second bow, and then stopped. Because we were so eager to hear the next piece!
Here's a performance by Mats Bergström:
Next: "Two Pianos" (2020) played by Lisa Kaplan and Nico Muhly. The music alternated between brittle and mournful. Or maybe "mournful" isn't the right word, maybe it was simply thoughtful? The articulation seemed an essential component of the music, in a way that had never struck me in any other piece of music. The brittle moments were dry and crisp, the mournful/thoughtful moments were juicy and smooth. The whole piece was only four minutes long.
*Double Sextet* (2007) was scored for two sextets of violin, cello, flute, piano, vibraphone, and piano. Reich won the Pulitzer Prize for this piece. He wrote it so it could be played either by six live players playing against a recording they had made or by twelve live players. Our performance was for twelve live players. The writing for the pianos and vibraphones was continually pulsating, highly rhythmic. The winds and strings played long lines over that but as often with Reich, the harmonic shifts were rigidly delineated. The conductor was fun to watch, slicing downbeats in the air with his right hand and punching out other cues with his left hand, sometimes tilting his torso from side to side to communicate patterns.
I noticed that these three pieces had lostic of rhythmic, harmonic, and textural variation but hardly any dynamic variety, very little soft music. It was generally mezzo forte and louder. I should also mention that the performers were absolute masters of the style. I'm sure it's not easy to play and they were relentlessly glorious.
The piece had a lyrical middle section, so creamy and heartfelt that it sounded like TV movie music compared to the austere music we had heard before. I really and truly mean that as a compliment! It abruptly returned to a more rhythmic vibe, and may I use the word "urban"?
The last section (none of these pieces had any actual section breaks, by the way, it was always continuous from start to finish) had a few tight focus, pared-down, relatively calm interludes for the pianos and vibraphones. The underlying pulse never let up but the texture thinned out to something more static. These changes gave a nice variety and an off kilter unpredictable element to the piece as a whole.
Here's a performance by Ensemble Offspring:
The second half started with *Jacob's Ladder* (2023), scored for two flutes, two clarinets, two oboes, four violins, two violas, two cellos, two vibraphones, piano, two sopranos, and two tenors. The voices were part of the ensemble, they didn't have a more soloistic presence than anyone else. The piece had more sweep and lyricism than the other pieces but still the same intense kinetic underpinning. He wrote distinct solo lines - - I realized, on hearing them, that I missed that in the other pieces.
This piece and the last piece on the program, both very recent, while still being 100% Reich, had a luminous beauty that the other pieces didn't have. It was like in his late 80s he had uncovered something transcendent in his own music.
Here's a performance by Ensemble Intercomperain and Synergy Vocals:
The final piece was *In All Your Ways* (2026), the US premiere, a co-commission by Carnegie Hall for this concert. It was scored for two flutes, two clarinets, two violins, viola, cello, two vibraphones, two marimbas, and two pianos. This piece had more variety than anything else we heard. One broad, lush, soaring phrase had an Aaron Copland vibe. But maybe I just heard it that way because I had heard *Appalachian Spring* a few weeks before...?
I wrote very few notes in the second half because I wanted to really take in the music.
Reich came out for a bow and the audience went berserk. He was walking with a cane but was walking on his own without help from anyone else. He acknowledged our ovation by waving his cane in the air, which increased the cheering by the power of five.
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