After more than 60 years, 40 releases and dozens of concerts, you’d forgive renowned 79-year-old composer Steve Reich for being a little tired. But as he prepares to headline AC Entertainment’s Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., this weekend, it's clear that's not the case.
“I’ll be working on something until they put me in a box,” Reich tells the Cream.
In fact, if he’d had the choice, Reich would have started his career even earlier — Mozart started at age 5 after all. But Reich’s musical awakening came a little later. During his 14th year, he heard Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, quickly followed by Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and, later on, what would be his greatest influence: John Coltrane. And so 16-year-old Reich began to create.
The New York City native has since been recognized for his innovative and experimental creations, many of which use the human voice in ways previously unrealized by 20th century composers. His influences are broad — jazz, classical and even a little rock 'n' roll — but the result is entirely unique, something Reich emphasizes as one of the goals of original musical composition.
“If you like music, and you sound like the music you’re imitating, then that’s getting nowhere,” Reich says. “What you gain are formal procedures that might be transferred to your music.”
Take Coltrane for example. His 1961 piece “Africa” is 16 minutes on one chord, which as Reich says, sounds like “a recipe for poison.”
“But you have rhythmic complexity, timbre variety, melodic invention — all compensate for music that stays harmonically the same,” he adds. “This makes it riveting and turns your attention to those details rather than harmonic change.”
This principle can be applied to Reich’s own piece, “Drumming,” which uses the same drumming pattern repeated with different instruments, including marimbas, women’s voices, different changes in pitch and in timbre, glockenspiel and whistling. The relation between the two pieces was an unconscious absorption of technique, a realization of Coltrane’s influence that Reich made his own — a crucial moral to the story.
“If you can’t add something to it that’s entirely your own,” Reich says, “don’t mess with it.”
That motto is just one of the aspects of Reich’s work that makes him a perfect fit for Big Ears, an Ashley Capps creation meant to highlight musical innovation.
“We wanted to shine a light on some of the most exciting and powerful music of our time and encourage fans to ignore their preconceptions, cross over artificial boundaries, and explore.” Capps says. “[Artists] who are creating music that ignores those boundaries and draws from a rich and deep well of influences.”
The lineup also features Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, The National's Bryce Dessner, Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) and Television, among others. Capps’ decision to feature Steve Reich was influenced by a Reich concert he attended as a teenager.
“I vividly remember when I first heard his music in the very early 1970s, when I was still a teenager,” Capps says. “It opened up a new world ... a whole new way of listening and experiencing music, and art, and life. And I clearly wasn't the only one. [The concert] was powerful. ... And beyond the laser focus of the music itself, there was a strong, entrepreneurial self-determination there that was also exciting and inspirational.”
“Inspirational” could also be used to describe one of Reich’s more recent releases: a 9/11 response entitled “WTC 9/11.” Reich was in Vermont when the towers were hit, but his son was staying in Reich’s Manhattan apartment, just four blocks from Ground Zero. After borrowing a neighbor’s minivan, the family was safely evacuated, but the Reichs could not return to their home for 30 days. And when they did return — destruction.
“Burning computers, burning wires, burning flesh,” Reich said. “It was just in the air. You didn’t have to be told what had happened.”
When people asked him if was going to write a response, Reich initially declined due to preoccupation with other projects and weariness of writing samples. Seven years later, the time was right for Reich to return to his unfinished business. The resulting piece draws from documentary and personal sources and references many aspects of the day’s events. The piece begins with an ominous, pulsing beeping from an off-the-hook landline — what Reich calls a “warning sign.” Reich was also inspired by a piece in the New York Times that described a group of Jewish women reading and chanting songs throughout the day, fulfilling Jewish burial laws.
“After the person dies, from the time of death to the time of burial, you can’t leave the body unattended, someone has to be a watcher,” Reich says. “You’re keeping the soul company until the body is buried, which should be as soon as possible, and then the soul is free to go where it goes. I thought that was really beautiful.”
But even after creating an enormous body of boundary-pushing work, what Reich finds most gratifying are the numerous musicians who have performed his work throughout the world, like fellow Big Ears performer Greenwood. Reich and Greenwood first met at a music festival in Poland, where Greenwood performed some of Reich’s music. “And if you hear that music you’d never say, you know, this guy’s a rocker, I mean no way," says Reich. "Here’s a guy who’s maintaining two musical lives.” Upon returning home from the festival, Reich was inspired to look up some of Radiohead’s music, and he was immediately drawn to two songs in particular: “Everything in Its Right Place” and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place.” These songs served as the catalyst for his 2012 work “Radio Rewrite.”
“I just thought, 'Wow, why don’t I take some of the melodies and some of the harmonies and use them for a piece which is not really written for glock instruments at all,'" says Reich. "It’s written for flute, clarinet, string quartet, tubas, pianos and electric bass, because electric bass is one of my favorite instruments period. ... As for how much you actually hear Radiohead, well, sometimes you sort of hear it and most often you don’t, but it’s there.”
Big Ears will offer a chance for Reich to be surrounded by new takes on his own music, by the very musicians he gives humble thanks to for their performances of his work.
“You can write a lot of music, and if it isn’t played, it’s just a bunch of paper sitting in a library,” Reich says. “What I’m most proud of is that there are musicians around the world who are moved to play my music and that there are audiences that show up because if they didn’t we wouldn’t have somewhere to play it.”
Big Ears will take place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday in downtown Knoxville. Weekend passes are $175 and day passes are $65. Visit the festival's site for full lineup and details.
