Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians Colin Currie Group, Synergy Vocals

• Steve Reich (b. 1936): Music for 18 Musicians:
• 1Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Pulses05:09
• 2Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section I04:30
• 3Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section II05:15
• 4Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section IIIA05:00
• 5Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section IIIB04:00
• 6Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section IV04:49
• 7Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section V05:35
• 8Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section VI05:28
• 9Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section VII04:31
• 10Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section VIII04:06
• 11Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section IX04:53
• 12Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section X01:25
• 13Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Section XI04:24
• 14Reich: Music for 18 Musicians: Pulses II04:51
• Total Runtime01:03:56

Info for Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians

One of Steve Reich’s most famous and enduring works, Music for 18 Musicians first caught the attention of percussionist Colin Currie in the 1980s. Over the years that followed, Currie dutifully built his library of Reich scores and recordings, but it was this work in particular that truly captured his imagination, holding him in its epic grasp ever since.

Of Reich’s comprehensive catalogue, it is this warm and resonant composition that signifies a major breakthrough in the sphere of minimalist music. “The perfect musical beehive” is how Currie describes performing the piece—and it’s easy to see why, with each musician purposefully teasing the material along, playing their own brilliantly contained part, yet contributing to something greater that hums with life.

Following the success of his previous Steve Reich albums, Steve Reich: Drumming (2018) and Colin Currie & Steve Reich Live at Fondation Louis Vuitton (2019), Currie is joined on this album by his closest musical colleagues and companions, the Colin Currie Group and Synergy Vocals, who recorded the work at London’s Abbey Road Studios in November 2022.

Steve Reich is a musical colossus. Of immeasurable influence on music’s development for over six decades, his output inspires, challenges, and above all captivates. I first heard his work as a teenager, an immediate obsession with Music for 18 Musicians leading to a comprehensive investigation of his other works. Forming an ensemble devoted to a huge number of these, and indeed a brand new one, has been an incredible adventure, that has brought together a brilliant group of players all of whom also grew up knowing and loving this music.

I met the composer in 2011, at a concert of ours at London’s Southbank Centre, when we unleashed our version of Drumming on his ears for the first time. Overwhelmed by the direction we had taken the piece in, and delighted by the fresh approach of a new generation of players, this marked the beginning of his association with the group, as frequent adviser and supporter of what we do. This relationship has been of an immensely rewarding nature, as we continue to absorb invaluable insight into a broad range of his pieces.

Our aim is to bring this music to as wide an audience as possible. We are driven by its magical allure, its energy and its sheer excitement. Our own Quartet (2014) is a pure joy, and another fascinating turn in this composer’s endeavours. Fresh, supple, haunting, it is an astounding addition to our repertoire, even as the composer nears his 80th birthday.

This group celebrates all that Reich has achieved: his legacy to music of such incredible width and unequalled originality. We salute and cherish him, and relish bringing it all to life in concert.

Music for 18 Musicians (1974-6) was a hit for Steve Reich when it was released in 1978 on the ECM label, selling 100,000 records in its first year. Scored for a chamber ensemble of percussion, pianos, strings, woodwinds and voices, Music for 18 is developed on a sequence of 11 chords where “one pattern morphs into another, addicted to the groove and pulse of the music,” (Tom Service, Guardian).

Colin Currie, percussion, conductor
Colin Currie Group:
Adam Clifford, percussion
Adrian Spillett, percussion
Antoine Bedewi, percussion
Catherine Ring, percussion
George Barton, percussion
Owen Gunnell, percussion
Richard Benjafield, percussion
Sam Walton, percussion
Rowland Sutherland, piccolo flute
Micaela Haslam, vocals
Heather Cairncross, vocals, whistling
Synergy Vocals

Colin Currie
Hailed as “the world’s finest and most daring percussionist” (Spectator), Colin Currie is a solo and chamber artist at the peak of his powers. Championing new music at the highest level, Currie is the soloist of choice for many of today’s foremost composers and he performs regularly with the world's leading orchestras and conductors.

A dynamic and adventurous soloist, Currie’s commitment to commissioning and creating new music was recognised in 2015 by the Royal Philharmonic Society who awarded him the Instrumentalist Award.

From his earliest years, Currie forged a pioneering path in creating new music for percussion, winning the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award in 2000 and receiving a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in 2005.

Currie has premiered works by composers such as Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, Louis Andriessen, HK Gruber, James MacMillan, Anna Clyne, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Jennifer Higdon, Kalevi Aho, Rolf Wallin, Kurt Schwertsik, Alexander Goehr, Andrew Norman, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Julia Wolfe and Nico Muhly. Looking ahead, in the coming seasons, Currie will premiere new works by Andy Akiho, Helen Grime and Simon Holt.

Currie is Artist in Association at London’s Southbank Centre, where he was the focus of a major percussion festival Metal Wood Skin in 2014 and continues to perform there every season.

Colin Currie Group
is a virtuosic ensemble that specialises in the music of Steve Reich. Their performances of Reich’s music have been hailed by the composer as “the best I’ve ever heard”.

Led by Colin Currie (“the world’s finest and most daring percussionist”, Spectator), the hand-picked ensemble was formed in 2006 for a performance of Drumming at the BBC Proms to celebrate the 70th birthday of Steve Reich. In the subsequent decade, the Colin Currie Group have performed Drumming around the world. They have expanded their repertoire to include many of Reich’s most popular works, including Music for 18 Musicians, Sextet, Tehillim and Music for Pieces of Wood and are privileged to have frequently had the composer present when rehearsing and performing these works.

The Colin Currie Quartet
was formed in 2018 to present exciting and adventurous works written for percussion quartet. The group is made up of Colin Currie, Owen Gunnell, Adrian Spillett and Sam Walton, who form the core of the Colin Currie Group, and in this new collective they perform works by Steve Reich and branch out into other composers who have been swept along by that highly influential force.

As some of the world’s leading solo, symphonic and chamber percussionists, each player of the quartet brings a different and insightful slant to the art of chamber percussion performance, and the group will be adding substantially to its repertoire in the coming years, including a dramatic piece for four drumkits by Julia Wolfe and a brand new quartet by British composer Dave Maric.

In 2018/19, their debut season, they performed at the NCPA Beijing, Wigmore Hall, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Dublin’s Great Music in Irish Houses and East Neuk Festival in Scotland.

This album contains no booklet.