Four Centuries of Great Music October 11, 2026 Steve Reich's 90th Birthday Celebration

Four Centuries of Great Music.   October 11, 2026  Steve Reich's 90th Birthday Celebration


This month is the 90th birthday of SteveReich. Reich is one of the founding fathers of the classical music genre known as minimalism.  So today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are celebrating his music.  His work has inspired later composers of not only classical music but also experimental music, rock, and contemporary electronic music, 

Reich was born on 10/03/1936 in New York City and was given piano lessons from an early age.   He 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 seriously, after hearing classical music of the 20th century.  Reich studied drums with Roland Kohloff in order to play jazz. While attending Cornell University, he minored in music and 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  his 1995 composition Proverb.  He went on to study composition with Vincent Persichetti at Juilliard (1958–1961) and with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland, California (1961–1963).  Reich worked with the San Francisco Tape Music Center along with Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick, and Terry Riley.  He was involved with the premiere of Riley's “In C”.

Reich adopted Terry Riley’s repetition of theme  approach with his experimentation with tape loops 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 that gradually move out of phase with one another.  

Steve Reich
Early Works
Nonesuch Records

To wrap up this first hour of Four Centuries of Great Music which is my celebration of Steve Reich's 90th Birthday which was on October 3rd we jump ahead a decade to 1976 for the work Music for 18 Musicians.  It is scored for 18 Musicians, some playing the instruments and the instruments are: three marimbas, two xylophones, vibraphone, maracas, violin, cello, two clarinets doubling on bass clarinets, four women’s voices, and four pianos.

Pulses I and Sections I to V.
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians- Pulses I
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section I
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section II
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section III 
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section IV
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section V


We open this 2nd hour of Four Centuries of Great Music which is y celebration of Steve Reich's 90th Birthday which was on October 3rd we conclude the  Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians with and Sections VI to XI and Pulses II.

Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section VI
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section VII
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section VIII
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section IX
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section X
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Section XI
Steve Reich:  Music for 18 Musicians - Pulses II


Steve Reich And Musicians
Phases [Disc 1]
Nonesuch Records


Triple Quartet was composed in 1999  commissioned by the Kronos Quartet and has since then has been in the quartet's live repertoire. It is a three-movement work for three string quartets; on the album, quartets two and three are pre-recorded and the players play the first quartet along with the tape, as they do live.


Steve Reich:  Triple Quartet - First Movement
Triple Quartet - Second Movement
Triple Quartet - Third Movement"
Kronos Quartet
Triple Quartet
Nonesuch Records

Steve Reich:  Duet for 2 Violins & Strings, or Chamber Ensemble
Andreas Weiss and  Edna Michell, violins with the Karlsruhe Camerata Chamber Music Ensemble & Ulf Hoelscher
Compassion: A Tribute to Yehudi Menuhin
Angel Records