Knowra Steve Reich Steve Reich Steve Reich is an American composer whose works helped establish musical minimalism. His music often builds from steady pulses, repeated patterns, and gradual changes in timing or texture.
Musical minimalism : A style of music built from limited materials, repetition, steady pulse, and gradual change. Reich became one of the composers most closely associated with this style.
It's Gonna Rain : A 1965 tape composition by Reich that uses phasing between two recordings of a preacher’s speech. It is an early, defining demonstration of Reich’s tape-loop phasing process.
John Coltrane : An American jazz saxophonist and composer whose improvisations reshaped modern jazz. Reich described Coltrane’s saxophone playing as an early influence on his musical imagination.
Jon Gibson : An American flutist, saxophonist, and composer associated with experimental and minimalist music. Gibson performed in early Reich works and helped realize their demanding rhythmic parts.
Minimalist music : A broad musical movement emphasizing repetition, limited materials, and gradual processes. Reich’s work helped define minimalism’s sound and its place in concert music.
Phasing : A process in which repeated patterns gradually shift out of synchrony with one another. Reich made gradual rhythmic displacement a signature compositional procedure.
Come Out : A 1966 tape composition by Reich built from repeated speech recorded from Daniel Hamm. Its gradual transformations turn a spoken phrase into an evolving rhythmic and tonal pattern.
African drumming : A broad range of percussion traditions from Africa, including interlocking rhythms and ensemble patterns. Reich studied Ewe drumming in Ghana, an encounter that influenced his approach to rhythm.
Arthur Murphy : An American pianist and composer active in New York’s experimental music community. Murphy performed the two-piano parts in the premiere of Piano Phase.
Postminimalism : A late twentieth-century musical tendency that combines minimalist techniques with broader styles and forms. Composers after Reich adapted repetition and process without adopting minimalism’s strictest limits.
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