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Reich At The Roxy
Steve Reich: Five Decades
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sweetspot
is an audio-visual production company specialising in music and arts projects.

We create productions which are the next-best-thing to actually being there - innovative projects with a real sense of place and event.

For more information contact Mike Roberts at
info@sweetspotDVD.com

SWEETSPOT PRODUCTIONS
173 St. John’s Hill
London, SW11 1TQ
UK

Telephone +44(0)20 7738 0323

Fax +44(0)20 7738 0929

 




 


ORDER THE DVD+CD

I'M SORRY BUT 'REICH AT THE ROXY' IS CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK. PLEASE DO NOT MAKE AN ORDER.
(N.B. The buttons below are still active, awaiting new stock)

For enquiries please email info@sweetspotdvd.com

Thanks,

Mike Roberts, Producer, July 2008




 

 










Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices & Organ (1973)

Sextet (1985)

Three Genesis Settings
from THE CAVE (1993)


Steve Reich interview


Extra interviews
and behind-the-scenes documentary material


Shot on
HIGH DEFINITION

1080/59.94i video

SURROUND-SPECIFIC
96kHz/24bit digital recordings made specially for 5.1 audio


Duration: 68 minutes

REICH at the ROXY

WINNER: 'BEST MIX' (orchestral), 2005 Surround Music Awards!

"There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of music history and Steve Reich is one of them."
(The Guardian, London)

In a rare on-screen interview Steve Reich introduces breathtaking performances of three innovative, genre-defying chamber compositions.

DVD:
NTSC, All Region
Picture Format: 16:9
Audio Selections: DTS ES 6.1 (folds down to 5.1),
Dolby Digital 5.1 & Stereo

AUDIO CD:
stereo mixes of the pieces, plus includes extended edits of the interview, with Steve Reich talking about each piece (total running time: 68'22")


REICH at the ROXY
is a unique event featuring superlative performances of these chamber works recorded here for the first time specifically for 5.1 surround sound, and performed against the background of their true spiritual home…New York City.

 

 

 


New Music ensemble Alarm Will Sound perform with what Steve Reich calls “a complete understanding of the music” in downtown Manhattan’s ROXY nightclub before an invited audience of their peers and various movers & shakers from the New York art/music scene. Joining Reich in the audience are fellow composers David Lang and Michael Gordon, plus veteran Steve Reich Ensemble members Joan LaBarbara, Nurit Tiles and Mark Stewart, with each being interviewed about their relationship to the music.

This ‘salon-in-the-round’ leads the home listener/viewer through an evolving journey of musical discovery and invention - from the exquisite, gradually unfolding logic of Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices & Organ (1973), to the fireworks of the percussive tour-de-force Sextet (1985) and the insistent syncopation of Three Genesis Settings from THE CAVE (1993) – presented here for the first time as a stand-alone vocal/ensemble piece.

To place the event in context the composer is interviewed in his Manhattan loft, reflecting on his career in relation to a constantly changing music scene: listening to Miles Davis at Birdland in the 50s, John Coltrane in the 60s, meeting up with Brian Eno and David Bowie in the 70s, being sampled by The Orb in the 90s and, most recently, having his pieces remixed by Ninjatune’s ColdCut and other DJs.

Behind-the-scenes footage of the band working through the pieces in a Brooklyn rehearsal space is used to illustrate some of Reich’s compositional ideas and methods, while across the East River at the ROXY, the 24-hour buzz of Lower Manhattan acts as a dramatic backdrop, placing the music within its natural habitat.

 




 


STEVE REICH Five Decades

 

 

A 70th birthday retrospective for 2006.

Included as part of THE BARBICAN CENTRE's 10-day festival: 'Phases - The Music Of Steve Reich'

“The most original musical thinker of our time”
(The New Yorker)

This five-episode audio podcast series explores Steve Reich's innovative, genre-defying career - spanning the decades from the ‘60s to the 2000s.

Excerpts from major compositions, plus interviews with acolytes and high-profile devotees from the worlds of contemporary classical, jazz, pop, rock, electronica and dance music all serve as testimony to the lasting potency and far reaching influence of Steve Reich’s music.

2006 sees the 70th birthday of a composer who has opened our ears to new musical worlds and ideas - meeting the challenge of technology by using it to create new musical forms.

This retrospective profile coincides with the composer’s 70th birthday celebrations in October 2006.

PRODUCTION DETAILS

Episode One: The 60s
Featuring COME OUT, PIANO PHASE, FOUR ORGANS. Contributors: SR, Gavin Bryars, Michael Tilson Thomas, Matt Black (Coldcut), Evan Ziporyn (Bang On A Can)

Episode Two: The 70s
Featuring DRUMMING, MUSIC FOR MALLET INSTRUMENTS, MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS. Contributors: SR, Nurit Tiles (Steve Reich & Musicians), Gavin Bryars, Peter Gabriel

Episode Three: The 80s
Featuring TEHILLIM, THE DESERT MUSIC, DIFFERENT TRAINS. Contributors: SR, Micaela Haslam (Synergy Vocals), Alan Pierson (Alarm Will Sound), Michael Tilson Thomas, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet)

Episode Four: The 90s
Featuring ELECTRIC COUNTERPOINT, THE CAVE, CITY LIFE. Contributors: SR, Alex Patterson (The Orb), Pat Metheny, Paul Hillier (Theatre of Voices), Alan Pierson

Episode Five: 2006
Featuring VARIATIONS FOR VIBES, PIANOS & STRINGS (also re. DANIEL VARIATIONS). Contributors: SR, Alan Pierson and various 'vox pops' from the Barbican festival

STEVE REICH Five Decades celebrates a career which has changed the face of classical, jazz and popular music and which continues to challenge our very definitions of such categories. If one were to choose a single, living composer to illustrate the major musical and cultural preoccupations of the 20th century, leading to where we stand today at the start of the 21st, it would have to be Steve Reich.

UNFORTUNATELY THE PODCAST IS NO LONGER BEING HOSTED BY THE BARBICAN...BUT HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD SOMEWHERE SOON
www.barbican.org.uk/reich

 

 


Other Useful Links

www.stevereich.com

www.alarmwillsound.com

www.resonancefm.com