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EMI Classics
Parent company	EMI
Founded	1990
Chairman EMI Classics	David Kassler
COO	Amanda Cupples
A&R Vice President	Andrew Cornall
President Virgin Classics	Alain Lanceron
Distributed Labels	EMI Classics Virgin Classics Classics for Pleasure (UK) Angel Records Blue Note Label Group (USA)
Genre(s)	Classical Music
Country	UK
Websites	www.emiclassics.com www.emiclassics.co.uk (UK) www.emiclassics.de (DE) www.emivirginclassics.fr (FR) www.angelrecords.com (US)

EMI Classics is a record label of EMI, formed in 1990 in order to reduce the need to create country-specific packaging and catalogs for internationally distributed classical music releases.

Classical recordings were formerly simultaneously released under combinations of Angel, Seraphim, Odeon, Columbia, His Master's Voice, and other labels, in part because competitors own these names in various countries. These have been moved under the EMI Classics umbrella to avoid the trademark problems. Releases created for distribution in specific countries are still distributed under the historical names, except for Columbia as EMI sold the Columbia name to Sony Music Entertainment. The red logo harkens back to the Red Seal releases, introduced by EMI predecessor the Gramophone Company in 1902. So HMV classical releases had red labels.

EMI Classics also incorporates the Virgin Classics label.

Artists[link]

Composers[link]

Sir Paul McCartney in concert

• Thomas Adès
• Craig Armstrong
• Howard Goodall
• Karl Jenkins
• Jon Lord
• Sir Paul McCartney
• Michael Nyman
• Zbigniew Preisner
• John Tavener
• Mohammed Abdel Wahab

Conductors[link]

Claudio Abbado Sir John Barbirolli Daniel Barenboim Sir Thomas Beecham Sir Adrian Boult William Christie Alan Curtis Lawrence Foster Wilhelm Furtwängler Carlo Maria Giulini Emmanuelle Haïm Bernard Haitink Vernon Handley Daniel Harding Richard Hickox Mariss Jansons Paavo Järvi Herbert von Karajan Rudolf Kempe

Otto Klemperer John Lanchbery Sir Charles Mackerras Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Möst, music director of the Cleveland Orchestra. Sir Neville Marriner Jean Martinon Kurt Masur Ingo Metzmacher Riccardo Muti Sir Roger Norrington Antonio Pappano André Previn Sir John Pritchard Sir Simon Rattle Jérémie Rhorer Blair Ellis Robertson Wolfgang Sawallisch Jeffrey Tate Franz Welser-Möst Sir David Willcocks

Chamber ensembles[link]

Choirs and vocal ensembles[link]

Orchestras[link]

Celebrated Indian sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar

Instrumentalists[link]

Piano[link]

Violin[link]

Korean American violin virtuoso Sarah Chang

Cello[link]

Trumpet[link]

• Maurice André
• Ole Edvard Antonsen
• Alison Balsom

Guitar[link]

• Manuel Barrueco
• Xuefei Yang

Oboe[link]

• Christoph Hartmann

Clarinet[link]

• Sabine Meyer

Flute[link]

• Emmanuel Pahud

Sitar[link]

• Anoushka Shankar
• Ravi Shankar

Singers[link]

Soprano[link]

Mezzo-soprano[link]

• Dame Janet Baker
• Joyce DiDonato
• Fairuz
• Christa Ludwig
• Réjane Magloire

Contralto[link]

• Umm Kulthum

Countertenor[link]

• Max Emanuel Cenčić
• David Daniels
• Philippe Jaroussky
• Gérard Lesne

Tenor[link]

Spanish tenor and conductor José Plácido Domingo Embil, better known as Plácido Domingo

Baritone[link]

• Olaf Bär
• Thomas Hampson

Bass[link]

• Jonathan Lemalu
• Willard White

Crossover acts[link]

English crossover soprano Sarah Brightman

Catalogue series[link]

See also[link]

• List of record labels

References[link]

External links[link]

Steve Reich in 2006

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich ( /ˈraɪʃ/;^[1] born October 3, 1936) is an American composer who is one of the pioneering composers of minimal music along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass.^[2][3][4]

His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns (examples are his early compositions, "It's Gonna Rain" and "Come Out"), and the use of simple, audible processes to explore musical concepts (for instance, "Pendulum Music" and "Four Organs"). These compositions, marked by their use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm and canons, have significantly influenced contemporary music, especially in the US. Reich's work took on a darker character in the 1980s with the introduction of historical themes as well as themes from his Jewish heritage, notably the Grammy Award-winning Different Trains.

Reich's style of composition influenced many other composers and musical groups. Reich has been described, in The Guardian by music critic Andrew Clements, as one of "a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history",^[5] and the critic Kyle Gann has said Reich "may...be considered, by general acclamation, America's greatest living composer."^[6]

On January 25, 2007, Reich was named the 2007 recipient of the Polar Music Prize, together with jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. On April 20, 2009, Reich was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Double Sextet.^[7]

Career[link]

Early life[link]

Reich was born in New York City to the Broadway lyricist June Sillman. When he was one year old, his parents divorced, and Reich divided his time between New York and California. He was given piano lessons as a child and describes growing up with the "middle-class favorites", having no exposure to music written before 1750 or after 1900. At the age of 14 he began to study music in earnest, after hearing music from the Baroque period and earlier, as well as music of the 20th century. Reich studied drums with Roland Kohloff in order to play jazz. While attending Cornell University, he took some music courses, but he graduated in 1957 with a B.A. in Philosophy. Reich's B.A. thesis was on Ludwig Wittgenstein; later he would set texts by that philosopher to music in Proverb (1995) and You Are (variations) (2006).

For a year following graduation, Reich studied composition privately with Hall Overton before he enrolled at Juilliard to work with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti (1958–1961). Subsequently he attended Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud (1961–1963) and earned a master's degree in composition. At Mills, Reich composed Melodica for melodica and tape, which appeared in 1986 on the three-LP release Music from Mills.^[8]

Reich worked with the San Francisco Tape Music Center along with Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Morton Subotnick, and Terry Riley.^[9] He was involved with the premiere of Riley's In C and suggested the use of the eighth note pulse, which is now standard in performance of the piece.

1960s[link]

Reich's early forays into composition involved experimentation with twelve-tone composition, but he found the rhythmic aspects of the twelve-tone series more interesting than the melodic aspects.^[10] Reich also composed film soundtracks for Plastic Haircut, Oh Dem Watermelons, and Thick Pucker, three films by Robert Nelson. The soundtrack of Plastic Haircut, composed in 1963, was a short tape collage, possibly Reich's first. The Watermelons soundtrack used two old Stephen Foster minstrel tunes as its basis, and used repeated phrasing together in a large five-part canon. The music for Thick Pucker arose from street recordings Reich made walking around San Francisco with Nelson, who filmed in black and white 16mm. This film no longer survives. A fourth film from 1965, about 25 minutes long and tentatively entitled "Thick Pucker II", was assembled by Nelson from outtakes of that shoot and more of the raw audio Reich had recorded. Nelson was not happy with the resulting film and never showed it.

Reich was influenced by fellow minimalist Terry Riley, whose work In C combines simple musical patterns, offset in time, to create a slowly shifting, cohesive whole. Reich adopted this approach to compose his first major work, It's Gonna Rain. Composed in 1965, the piece used a fragment of a sermon about the end of the world given by a black Pentecostal street-preacher known as Brother Walter. Reich built on his early tape work, transferring the last three words of the fragment, "it's gonna rain!", to multiple tape loops which gradually move out of phase with one another.

The 13-minute "Come Out" (1966) uses similarly manipulated recordings of a single spoken line given by Daniel Hamm, one of the falsely accused Harlem Six, who was severely injured by police. The survivor, who had been beaten, punctured a bruise on his own body to convince police about his beating. The spoken line includes the phrase "to let the bruise’s blood come out to show them." Reich rerecorded the fragment "come out to show them" on two channels, which are initially played in unison. They quickly slip out of sync; gradually the discrepancy widens and becomes a reverberation. The two voices then split into four, looped continuously, then eight, and continues splitting until the actual words are unintelligible, leaving the listener with only the speech's rhythmic and tonal patterns.

A similar, lesser known example of process music is "Pendulum Music" (1968), which consists of the sound of several microphones swinging over the loudspeakers to which they are attached, producing feedback as they do so. "Pendulum Music" has never been recorded by Reich himself, but was introduced to rock audiences by Sonic Youth in the late 1990s.

Reich's first attempt at translating this phasing technique from recorded tape to live performance was the 1967 Piano Phase, for two pianos. In Piano Phase the performers repeat a rapid twelve-note melodic figure, initially in unison. As one player keeps tempo with robotic precision, the other speeds up very slightly until the two parts line up again, but one sixteenth note apart. The second player then resumes the previous tempo. This cycle of speeding up and then locking in continues throughout the piece; the cycle comes full circle three times, the second and third cycles using shorter versions of the initial figure. Violin Phase, also written in 1967, is built on these same lines. Piano Phase and Violin Phase both premiered in a series of concerts given in New York art galleries.

Reich also tried to create the phasing effect in a piece "that would need no instrument beyond the human body". He found that the idea of phasing was inappropriate for the simple ways he was experimenting to make sound. Instead, he composed Clapping Music (1972), in which the players do not phase in and out with each other, but instead one performer keeps one line of a 12-quaver-long (12-eighth-note-long) phrase and the other performer shifts by one quaver beat every 12 bars, until both performers are back in unison 144 bars later.

The 1967 prototype piece Slow Motion Sound was not performed although Chris Hughes performed it 27 years later as "Slow Motion Blackbird" on his Reich-influenced 1994 album Shift. It introduced the idea of slowing down a recorded sound until many times its original length without changing pitch or timbre, which Reich applied to Four Organs (1970), which deals specifically with augmentation. The piece has maracas playing a fast eighth note pulse, while the four organs stress certain eighth notes using an 11th chord. This work therefore dealt with repetition and subtle rhythmic change. It is unique in the context of Reich's other pieces in being linear as opposed to cyclic like his earlier works— the superficially similar Phase Patterns, also for four organs but without maracas, is (as the name suggests) a phase piece similar to others composed during the period. Four Organs was performed as part of a Boston Symphony Orchestra program, and was Reich's first composition to be performed in a large traditional setting.

1970s[link]

In 1971, Reich embarked on a five-week trip to study music in Ghana, during which he learned from the master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. Reich also studied Balinese gamelan in Seattle. From his African experience, as well as A. M. Jones's Studies in African Music about the music of the Ewe people, Reich drew inspiration for his 90-minute piece Drumming, which he composed shortly after his return. Composed for a nine-piece percussion ensemble with female voices and piccolo, Drumming marked the beginning of a new stage in his career, for around this time he formed his ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, and increasingly concentrated on composition and performance with them. Steve Reich and Musicians, which was to be the sole ensemble to interpret his works for many years, still remains active with many of its original members.

After Drumming, Reich moved on from the "phase shifting" technique that he had pioneered, and began writing more elaborate pieces. He investigated other musical processes such as augmentation (the temporal lengthening of phrases and melodic fragments). It was during this period that he wrote works such as Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973) and Six Pianos (1973).

In 1974, Reich began writing what many would call his seminal work, Music for 18 Musicians. This piece involved many new ideas, although it also hearkened back to earlier pieces. It is based on a cycle of eleven chords introduced at the beginning (called "Pulses"), followed by a small section of music based on each chord ("Sections I-XI"), and finally a return to the original cycle ("Pulses"). This was Reich's first attempt at writing for larger ensembles. The increased number of performers resulted in more scope for psychoacoustic effects, which fascinated Reich, and he noted that he would like to "explore this idea further". Reich remarked that this one work contained more harmonic movement in the first five minutes than any other work he had written. Steve Reich and Musicians made the premier recording of this work on ECM Records.

Reich explored these ideas further in his frequently recorded pieces Music for a Large Ensemble (1978) and Octet (1979). In these two works, Reich experimented with "the human breath as the measure of musical duration … the chords played by the trumpets are written to take one comfortable breath to perform".^[11] Human voices are part of the musical palette in Music for a Large Ensemble but the wordless vocal parts simply form part of the texture (as they do in Drumming). With Octet and his first orchestral piece Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards (also 1979), Reich's music showed the influence of Biblical cantillation, which he had studied in Israel since the summer of 1977. After this, the human voice singing a text would play an increasingly important role in Reich's music.

In 1974 Reich published a book, Writings About Music (ISBN 0814773583), containing essays on his philosophy, aesthetics, and musical projects written between 1963 and 1974. An updated and much more extensive collection, Writings On Music (1965–2000) (ISBN 0195111710), was published in 2002.

1980s[link]

Reich's work took on a darker character in the 1980s with the introduction of historical themes as well as themes from his Jewish heritage. Tehillim (1981), Hebrew for psalms, is the first of Reich's works to draw explicitly on his Jewish background. The work is in four parts, and is scored for an ensemble of four women's voices (one high soprano, two lyric sopranos and one alto), piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, six percussion (playing small tuned tambourines without jingles, clapping, maracas, marimba, vibraphone and crotales), two electronic organs, two violins, viola, cello and double bass, with amplified voices, strings, and winds. A setting of texts from psalms 19:2–5 (19:1–4 in Christian translations), 34:13–15 (34:12–14), 18:26–27 (18:25–26), and 150:4–6, Tehillim is a departure from Reich's other work in its formal structure; the setting of texts several lines long rather than the fragments used in previous works makes melody a substantive element. Use of formal counterpoint and functional harmony also contrasts with the loosely structured minimalist works written previously.

	Pat Metheny "Electric Counterpoint III Fast" (1989) noicon 25 seconds of "Electric Counterpoint III Fast" performed by Pat Metheny. Composed by Steve Reich. From "Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint" album.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Different Trains (1988), for string quartet and tape, uses recorded speech, as in his earlier works, but this time as a melodic rather than a rhythmic element. In Different Trains Reich compares and contrasts his childhood memories of his train journeys between New York and California in 1939–1941 with the very different trains being used to transport contemporaneous European children to their deaths under Nazi rule. The Kronos Quartet recording of Different Trains was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 1990. The composition was described by Richard Taruskin as "the only adequate musical response—one of the few adequate artistic responses in any medium—to the Holocaust", and he credited the piece with earning Reich a place among the great composers of the 20th century.^[13]

1990s to present[link]

In 1993, Reich collaborated with his wife, the video artist Beryl Korot, on an opera, The Cave, which explores the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam through the words of Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans, echoed musically by the ensemble. The work, for percussion, voices, and strings, is a musical documentary, named for the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, where a mosque now stands and Abraham is said to have been buried. The two collaborated again on the opera Three Tales, which concerns the Hindenburg disaster, the testing of nuclear weapons on Bikini Atoll, and other more modern concerns, specifically Dolly the sheep, cloning, and the technological singularity.

As well as pieces using sampling techniques, like Three Tales and City Life (1994), Reich also returned to composing purely instrumental works for the concert hall, starting with Triple Quartet (1998) written for the Kronos Quartet that can either be performed by string quartet and tape, three string quartets or 36-piece string orchestra. According to Reich, the piece is influenced by Bartók's and Alfred Schnittke's string quartets, and Michael Gordon's Yo Shakespeare.^[14] This series continued with Dance Patterns (2002), Cello Counterpoint (2003), and sequence of works centered around Variations: You Are (Variations) (2004) (a work which looks back to the vocal writing of works like Tehillim or The Desert Music), Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings (2005, for the London Sinfonietta) and Daniel Variations (2006).

Invited by Walter Fink, he was the 12th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2002.

In an interview with The Guardian, Reich stated that he continues to follow this direction with his piece Double Sextet (2007) commissioned by eighth blackbird, an American ensemble consisting of the instrumental quintet (flute, clarinet, violin or viola, cello and piano) of Schoenberg's piece Pierrot Lunaire (1912) plus percussion. Reich states that he was thinking about Stravinsky's Agon (1957) as a model for the instrumental writing.

Reich was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music, on April 20, 2009, for Double Sextet.^[15]

December 2010 NoneSuch and Indaba Music held a community remix contest where over 250 submissions were received, and Steve Reich and Christian Carey judged the finals. Reich spoke in a related BBC interview that once he composed a piece he would not alter it again himself; "when it's done, it's done". On the other hand he acknowledged that "remixes" have an old tradition e.g. famous religious music pieces where melodies were further developed into new songs.^[16]

In May 2011, Steve Reich received an honorary doctorate from the New England Conservatory of Music.^[17]

Influence[link]

Reich's style of composition has influenced many other composers and musical groups, including John Adams, the progressive rock band King Crimson, the new-age guitarist Michael Hedges, the art-pop and electronic musician Brian Eno, the experimental art/music group The Residents, the composers associated with the Bang on a Can festival (including David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe), and numerous indie rock musicians including songwriter Sufjan Stevens^[18][19] and instrumental ensembles Tortoise,^[20][21][22] The Mercury Program (themselves influenced by Tortoise),^[23] So Many Dynamos, Do Make Say Think and A Silver Mt. Zion.^{[citation needed]} Godspeed You! Black Emperor composed a song, unreleased, entitled "Steve Reich".^[24]

John Adams commented, "He didn't reinvent the wheel so much as he showed us a new way to ride."^[25] He has also influenced visual artists such as Bruce Nauman, and many notable choreographers have made dances to his music, Eliot Feld, Jiří Kylián, Douglas Lee and Jerome Robbins among others; he has expressed particular admiration of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's work set to his pieces.

In featuring a sample of Reich's Electric Counterpoint (1987) the British ambient techno act the Orb exposed a new generation of listeners to the composer's music with its 1990 production “Little Fluffy Clouds.”^[26] Further acknowledgment of Reich's influence on various electronic dance music producers came with the release in 1999 of the Reich Remixed^[27] tribute album which featured reinterpretations by artists such as DJ Spooky, Kurtis Mantronik, Ken Ishii, and Coldcut, among others.^[26]

Reich often cites Pérotin, J.S. Bach, Debussy, Bartók, and Stravinsky as composers he admires, whose tradition he wished as a young composer to become part of.^[28] Jazz is a major part of the formation of Reich's musical style, and two of the earliest influences on his work were vocalists Ella Fitzgerald and Alfred Deller, whose emphasis on the artistic capabilities of the voice alone with little vibrato or other alteration was an inspiration to his earliest works. John Coltrane's style, which Reich has described as "playing a lot of notes to very few harmonies", also had an impact; of particular interest was the album Africa/Brass, which "was basically a half-an-hour in F."^[29] Reich's influence from jazz includes its roots, also, from the West African music he studied in his readings and visit to Ghana. Other important influences are Kenny Clarke and Miles Davis, and visual artist friends such as Sol LeWitt and Richard Serra. Reich recently contributed the introduction to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky.

Recent projects[link]

Reich has the world premiere of a piece, WTC 9/11, written for String Quartet and Tape, a similar instrumentation to that of Different Trains. It premiered in March 2011 by the Kronos Quartet, at Duke University, North Carolina, USA.^{[citation needed]}

Quotations[link]

[...] I drove a cab in San Francisco, and in New York I worked as a part-time social worker. Phil Glass and I had a moving company for a short period of time. I did all kinds of odd jobs [...] I started making a living as a performer in my own ensemble. I would never have thought that it was how I was going to survive financially. It was a complete wonder.
—From an interview with Richard Kessler, 1998^[30]

The point is, if you went to Paris and dug up Debussy and said, 'Excusez-moi Monsieur…are you an impressionist?' he'd probably say 'Merde!' and go back to sleep. That is a legitimate concern of musicologists, music historians, and journalists, and it's a convenient way of referring to me, Riley, Glass, La Monte Young [...] it's become the dominant style. But, anybody who's interested in French Impressionism is interested in how different Debussy and Ravel and Satie are—and ditto for what's called minimalism. [...] Basically, those kind of words are taken from painting and sculpture, and applied to musicians who composed at the same period as that painting and sculpture was made [...].
—From an Interview with Rebecca Y. Kim, 2000^[31]

All musicians in the past, starting with the middle ages were interested in popular music. (...) Béla Bartók's music is made entirely of sources from Hungarian folk music. And Igor Stravinsky, although he lied about it, used all kinds of Russian sources for his early ballets. Kurt Weill's great masterpiece Dreigroschenoper is using the cabaret-style of the Weimar Republic and that's why it is such a masterpiece. Only artificial division between popular and classical music happened unfortunately through the blindness of Arnold Schoenberg and his followers to create an artificial wall, which never existed before him. In my generation we tore the wall down and now we are back to the normal situation, for example if Brian Eno or David Bowie come to me, and if popular musicians remix my music like The Orb or DJ Spooky it is a good thing. This is a natural normal regular historical way.
—From an Interview with Jakob Buhre^[32]

Works[link]

• Soundtrack for The Plastic Haircut, tape (1963)
• Music for two or more pianos (1964)
• Livelihood (1964)
• It's Gonna Rain, tape (1965)
• Soundtrack for Oh Dem Watermelons, tape (1965)
• Come Out, tape (1966)
• Melodica, for melodica and tape (1966)
• Reed Phase, for soprano saxophone and tape (1966)
• Piano Phase for two pianos, or two marimbas (1967)
• Slow Motion Sound concept piece (1967)
• Violin Phase for violin and tape or four violins (1967)
• My Name Is for three tape recorders and performers (1967)
• Pendulum Music for 3 or 4 microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers (1968) (revised 1973)^[33]
• Four Organs for four electric organs and maracas (1970)
• Phase Patterns for four electric organs (1970)
• Drumming for 4 pairs of tuned bongo drums, 3 marimbas, 3 glockenspiels, 2 female voices, whistling and piccolo (1970/1971)
• Clapping Music for two musicians clapping (1972)
• Music for Pieces of Wood for five pairs of tuned claves (1973)
• Six Pianos (1973) – transcribed as Six Marimbas (1986)
• Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973)
• Music for 18 Musicians (1974–76)
• Music for a Large Ensemble (1978)
• Octet (1979) – withdrawn in favor of the 1983 revision for slightly larger ensemble, Eight Lines
• Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards for orchestra (1979)
• Tehillim for voices and ensemble (1981)
• Vermont Counterpoint for amplified flute and tape (1982)
• The Desert Music for chorus and orchestra or voices and ensemble (1983, text by William Carlos Williams)
• Sextet for percussion and keyboards (1984)
• New York Counterpoint for amplified clarinet and tape, or 11 clarinets and bass clarinet (1985)
• Three Movements for orchestra (1986)
• Electric Counterpoint for electric guitar or amplified acoustic guitar and tape (1987, for Pat Metheny)
• The Four Sections for orchestra (1987)
• Different Trains for string quartet and tape (1988)
• The Cave for four voices, ensemble and video (1993, with Beryl Korot)
• Duet for two violins and string ensemble (1993)
• Nagoya Marimbas for two marimbas (1994)
• City Life for amplified ensemble (1995)
• Proverb for voices and ensemble (1995, text by Ludwig Wittgenstein)
• Triple Quartet for amplified string quartet (with prerecorded tape), or three string quartets, or string orchestra (1998)
• Know What Is Above You for four women’s voices and 2 tamborims (1999)
• Three Tales for video projection, five voices and ensemble (1998–2002, with Beryl Korot)
• Dance Patterns for 2 xylophones, 2 vibraphones and 2 pianos (2002)
• Cello Counterpoint for amplified cello and multichannel tape (2003)
• You Are (Variations) for voices and ensemble (2004)
• For Strings (with Winds and Brass) for orchestra (1987/2004)
• Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings dance piece for three string quartets, four vibraphones, and two pianos (2005)
• Daniel Variations for four voices and ensemble (2006)
• Double Sextet for 2 violins, 2 cellos, 2 pianos, 2 vibraphones, 2 clarinets, 2 flutes or ensemble and pre-recorded tape (2007)
• 2x5 for 2 drum sets, 2 pianos, 4 electric guitars and 2 bass guitars (2008)
• Mallet Quartet for 2 marimbas and 2 vibraphones or 4 marimbas (or solo percussion and tape) (2009)
• WTC 9/11 for String Quartet and Tape (2010)

Selected discography[link]

• Drumming. Steve Reich and Musicians (Two recordings: Deutsche Grammophon and Nonesuch) So Percussion (Cantaloupe)
• Music for 18 Musicians. Steve Reich and Musicians (Two recordings: ECM and Nonesuch), Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble (Innova), Ensemble Modern (RCA).
• Octet/Music for a Large Ensemble/Violin Phase. Steve Reich and Musicians (ECM)
• Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards/Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ/ Six Pianos. San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Edo de Waart, Steve Reich & Musicians (Deutsche Grammophon)
• Tehillim/The Desert Music. Alarm Will Sound and OSSIA, Alan Pierson (Cantaloupe)
• Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint. Kronos Quartet, Pat Metheny (Nonesuch)
• You Are (Variations)/Cello Counterpoint. Los Angeles Master Chorale, Grant Gershon, Maya Beiser (Nonesuch)
• Steve Reich: Works 1965-1995. Various performers (Nonesuch).
• Daniel Variations, with Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings. London Sinfonietta, Grant Gershon, Alan Pierson (Nonesuch)
• Double Sextet/2x5, Eighth Blackbird and Bang on a Can (Nonesuch)
• Piano Phase, transcribed for guitar, Alexandre Gérard (Catapult)
• Phase to Face, a film documentary about Steve Reich by Eric Darmon & Franck Mallet (EuroArts) DVD

Further reading[link]

• D.J. Hoek. Steve Reich: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press, 2002.
• Steve Reich. Writings about Music. Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1974.
• K. Robert Schwarz. Minimalists. Phaidon Press, 1996.

See also[link]

• Minimalist music
• Steve Reich and Musicians

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Potter, Keith (2000). Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass. Music in the Twentieth Century series. Cambridge, UK; New York, New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Reich, Steve; Hillier, Paul (Editor) (April 1, 2002). Writings on Music, 1965–2000. USA: Oxford University Press. p. 272. ISBN 0-19-511171-0. 
• Reich, Steve (1974). Writings About Music. Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. p. 78. ISBN 0-919616-02-X. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Steve Reich

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Steve Reich

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Sarah Chang
Chang before performing a 2005 concert
Born	Young Joo Chang[1] (1980-12-10) December 10, 1980 (age 31) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Occupation	Violinist
Years active	1984–present
Korean name
Hangul	장영주
Hanja	張永主
Revised Romanization	Jang Yeong-ju
McCune–Reischauer	Chang Yŏng-ju

Sarah Chang (Korean: 장영주) (born December 10, 1980) is an American classical violinist. Her debut came in 1989 with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Shortly thereafter, Chang was recognized as a child prodigy. She enrolled at Juilliard School to study music, graduating in 1999 and continuing university studies. During the 1990s and 2000s, Chang had major roles including being a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. She has also performed in countries such as England, France, Germany, Netherlands, China, South Korea, and Japan.

She has collaborated with most major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic. For the 2004 Olympics, she was chosen to participate in the Olympic Torch relay in New York.^[2] Yale University dedicated a chair in Sprague Hall for Chang's name in 2005.^[2]

Early life and education[link]

Chang was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Voorhees Township, New Jersey.^[3] She is the daughter of Myoung-Jun, a composer, and Min-Soo Chang, who was a violinist and music teacher.^[4] Chang's parents moved to the United States from South Korea in 1979 for her father's advanced music degree at Temple University. Her mother took composition classes at the University of Pennsylvania. Chang has said that although she "never actually lived in Korea... I do still feel very strongly it's where my roots are."^[5] She has a younger brother, Michael. In a 1998 interview to PBS, Chang explained that he is an avid tennis player and is thus often mistaken for being Michael Chang, an unrelated athlete with the same name.^[6] Her father has settled back to Korea, while her brother graduated from Princeton University in 2011.^[7][8]

In 1986, when Chang was 5 years old, she eventually auditioned for and was accepted to the Juilliard School by performing the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor.^[9] Chang spent her weekends attending music classes at Juilliard and shopping in New York City with her parents.^[10][11] In 1989, she began working with Dorothy DeLay at her studio,^[12] where her father had received his musical lessons. A former student and assistant to DeLay, Hyo Kang, also provided training to Chang.^[13][14]

In addition to her native English, she is fluent in both Korean and German.^[15][16]

Following her 1999 high school graduation in New Jersey, she returned to Juilliard for university and studied with DeLay.^[17]

Due to her musical accomplishments, Chang is among a very small number of professional figures recognized as a child prodigy.^[18][19]

Career[link]

Early work[link]

Her mother trained her to play one-finger melodies on the piano at age 3. For her fourth birthday, she was given a 1/16-sized violin. At age 8, she auditioned alongside Zubin Mehta and Riccardo Muti, who worked with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Both granted her immediate engagements.^[20][21][22]

In 1991, when Chang was 10 years old, she recorded her first album, Debut;^[23] it was released by EMI Classics on August 18, 1992 and quickly reached the Billboard chart of classical best-sellers.^[24] Chang quickly rose to fame and became known on an international scale, performing up to 150 concerts a year. At the age of 17, she asked for a three-month break; this opportunity did not come until she turned 20 years old. In 2006, Newsweek ranked her as one of the Top Eight Achieving Females in the United States. In the interview accompanying the feature, she commented: "I think having a career at such an early age kept me focused. We schedule at least two to three years in advance in the classical industry. I felt so grounded and so grateful to already know what it was that I wanted to do with my life."^[25]

2002–2005[link]

Chang in Italy at the 2005 Festival I suoni delle Dolomiti, performing outdoors

In 2002, she performed in Pyongyang, North Korea. Chang commented: "The concert was full of government officials. Every single last seat. It was invitation only, but it was an unbelievable experience. Frightening and exhilarating at the same time. And I just thought about how lucky I am. I am so fortunate to be a musician, and at that moment, I genuinely felt that music is the one and only universal language."^[25][26]

Chang took part in watchmaker Movado's global advertising campaign "The Art of Time" with Pete Sampras and composer Wynton Marsalis. For the 2004 Olympics, she was selected to carry the Olympic Torch in New York.^[2] In 2005, Yale University dedicated a chair in Sprague Hall in Chang's name.^[2] Following this, Chang toured for a year with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a Sextet programme of summer festivals leading to a concert at the Berlin Philharmonie.^[27][28]

2007–present[link]

Chang had her recital at Carnegie Hall on April 7, 2007 with British pianist Ashley Wass,^[29] and continued to perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen and make appearances with the former at both the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall throughout 2008.^[30] From May 2009 to June 2010, she held recital tours across Europe, North America and Asia with pianist Andrew von Oeyen; a July 2010 recording of the two was eventually released.^[31] In the February 12, 2010 program, she held her recital at the Barbican Hall in London.^[32] Chang made an appearance at the University of Southern California in March 2010, where she played Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26. She performed at the Hollywood Bowl in August 2010.^[33][34]

Public image[link]

Chang plays the 1717 Guarneri del Gesu violin, which she received through the late Isaac Stern,^[35] and uses a variety of bows: Pajeot for Mozart and Bach; Sartory for "the big-whammy concertos, the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius"; and two Dominique Peccattes for other music.^[35]

Chang has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Montréal Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, orchestras in London, England, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, Holland. Additionally, she has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NHK Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra, the Washington National Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Honolulu Symphony, and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra amongst others.

Chang has also been a soloist under the baton of conductors Mariss Jansons, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, Bernard Haitink, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, André Previn, Sir Simon Rattle, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, Placido Domingo, David Lockington, David Zinman, Gustavo Dudamel, Valery Gergiev, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jaap van Zweden, John Williams and others.

Notable recital engagements have included her Carnegie Hall debut and performances at the Kennedy Center, Orchestra Hall, Symphony Hall, Barbican Centre, Philharmonie, and Concertgebouw.

As a chamber musician, Chang has collaborated with Pinchas Zukerman, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yefim Bronfman, Martha Argerich, Leif Ove Andsnes, Stephen Kovacevich, Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, Lars Vogt, and the late Isaac Stern. She has made several chamber recordings with current and former members of the Berlin Philharmonic, including the Sextet and Piano Quintet of Dvorak and the Souvenir de Florence of Tchaikovsky.

In January 2011, Sarah Chang was interviewed by Evan Solomon of Power & Politics (CBC) where it was revealed that she had been appointed by President Obama to the Presidential Commission on Russian Relations, and also was taking on a new role as State Department Special Cultural Envoy.^[9] Chang has already been promoting and supporting childhood musical education for many years. She has also been a cultural ambassador for the U.S.; for instance, she was invited to play in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, with a South Korean orchestra in 2002.^[26]

Awards[link]

Chang has received a number of awards, including:

• 1992 – Avery Fisher Career Grant
• 1993 – Gramophone Magazine Young Artist of the Year (1993)
• 1993 – Newcomer of the Year for "Echo" (Germany)
• 1993 – Nan Pa (South Korea)
• 1994 – Newcomer of the Year at the International Classical Music Awards
• 1999 – Avery Fisher Prize^{[fn 1]}
• 2004 – Internazionale Accademia Musicale Chigiana Award in Siena, Italy
• 2004 – Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame^{[fn 2]}

Discography[link]

CDs[link]

• 1992: Debut Sarasate, Elgar, Paganini (EMI Classics)
• 1993: Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dances 1, 2, 4, 7 / Peter Tchaikowsky: Violin concerto op 35. Conductor: Sir Colin Davis (EMI Classics)
• 1996: Édouard Lalo: Symphonie Espagnole/Henri Vieuxtemps: Violin concerto Nr. 5. Orchestra: Concertgebouw Orchestra (Lalo) / Philharmonia Orchestra (Vieuxtemps), Conductor: Charles Dutoit (EMI Classics)
• 1997: Simply Sarah (EMI Classics)
• 1998: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Jean Sibelius: Violin concertos. Orchestra: Berliner Philharmoniker, Conductor: Maris Jansons (EMI Classics)
• 1999: Sweet Sorrow. Pieces of Vitali, Gluck, Brahms, Lalo, Vieuxtemps, Paganini, Sibelius, Liszt, Tschaikowsky, Saint-Saens, misc. Orchestras, conductors (EMI Classics)
• 1999: Richard Strauss: Violin concerto and Violin sonata. Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Conductor and piano: Wolfgang Sawallisch (EMI Classics)
• 2000: Karl Goldmark: Violin concerto op. 28. Orchestra: Gürzenich-Orchester, Conductor: James Conlon (EMI Classics)
• 2002: Fire and Ice. Sarasate, Massenet, Ravel, Beethoven, J. S. Bach, Orchestra: Berliner Philharmoniker, Conductor: Plácido Domingo (EMI Classics)
• 2002: Antonín Dvořák, Tchaikowsky: (with other artists) Souvenir de Florence (EMI Classics)
• 2003: Classical Legends. Compilation ft Sarah Chang and other artists
• 2004: French Violin sonatas. Piano: Lars Vogt (EMI Classics)
• 2004: Ralph Vaughan Williams: Sinfonies. Disc 4: The Lark Ascending. Conductor: Bernard Haitink (EMI Classics)
• 2005: Meisterwerke der Kammermusik. Compilation ft Sarah Chang and other artists, 3 CD
• 2005: Andrew Lloyd Webber: Phantasia (with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber) (EMI Classics)
• 2006: Dmitri Shostakovich: Violin concerto Nr.1 / Sergej Prokofieff: Violin concert Nr. 1. Orchestra: Berliner Philharmoniker, Conductor: Sir Simon Rattle (EMI Classics)
• 2007: Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, and Violin Concerto in g, op 12 no 1, RV 317. Orchestra: Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (EMI Classics)
• 2009: Max Bruch Violin Concerto No.1, Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto Kurt Masur, Dresdner Philharmonie (EMI Classics)^[36]

DVDs[link]

• 1995: Niccolò Paganini Violin Concerto Berliner Philharmoniker, Zubin Mehta
• 2003: Spanish Night: Sarasate Carmen Fantasie, Zigeunerweisen, Thais Meditation, Berliner Philharmoniker, Plácido Domingo (Conductor)

Footnotes[link]

References[link]