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The Colin Currie Group is a British percussion group founded and led by Colin Currie. This ensemble is dedicated to performing and recording the music of Steve Reich.
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The Colin Currie Group is a British percussion group founded and led by Colin Currie. This ensemble is dedicated to performing and recording the music of Steve Reich.
Percussionist Colin Currie has been fascinated by Steve Reich's music since he was a teenager. [1] He formed The Colin Currie Group in 2006 for a performance of Drumming , by Steve Reich, at the BBC Proms to celebrate the composer's 70th birthday. [2] The Colin Currie Group continued to perform Drumming around the world, and have since added a number of works by Reich to their repertoire, such as Music for 18 Musicians , Sextet , Tehillim , and Music for Pieces of Wood . Reich has worked closely with the ensemble, and has said that Colin Currie is “one of the greatest musicians working in the world today.” [3] Reich has performed with the Colin Currie Group, notably for a performance of his Clapping Music , in a concert that saw the 2014 world premiere of Quartet for two vibraphones and two pianos. [3]
The Colin Currie Group has performed extensively in the United Kingdom, as well as performing their international debut at Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall in 2012, and their European debut at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. They have also performed at Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, London's Southbank Centre, the Paris Cité de la Musique, Cologne Philharmonie, Prague Strings of Autumn Festival, Rotterdam De Doelen, Glasgow Minimal Festival, Helsinki Festival, and the Macau Festival. [4]
The group contains up to a dozen members in addition to Currie, according to the pieces performed. [lower-alpha 1]
In 2017, The Colin Currie Group successfully crowdfunded a recording of Reich's Drumming, exceeding their goal, [5] and released this recording on Colin Currie Records in February 2018. [6] In February 2018, Nonesuch Records released a recording of Colin Currie Group performing Steve Reich's Quartet, paired with the composer's Pulse, performed by International Contemporary Ensemble. [7]
Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." To do so, his music employs the technique of phase shifting, in which a phrase is slightly altered over time, in a flow that is clearly perceptible to the listener.
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, and delay systems. His best known works are the 1964 composition In C and the 1969 LP A Rainbow in Curved Air, both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental music, rock, and contemporary electronic music.
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Music for 18 Musicians is a work of minimalist music composed by Steve Reich during 1974–1976. Its world premiere was on April 24, 1976, at The Town Hall in New York City. Following this, a recording of the piece was released by ECM New Series in 1978.
Sextet is a composition by American composer Steve Reich. The piece was written and first performed in 1984, and slightly revised in 1985.
City Life is a minimalist composition by Steve Reich written in 1995. The work was commissioned by Ensemble Modern, the London Sinfonietta, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. It premiered in March 1995 and was recorded on the Nonesuch label in 1996.
Steve Reich and Musicians, sometimes credited as the Steve Reich Ensemble, is a musical ensemble founded and led by the American composer Steve Reich. The group has premiered and performed many of Reich's works both nationally and internationally. In 1999, Reich received a Grammy Award for "Best Small Ensemble Performance " for the ensemble's performance of Music for 18 Musicians.
Tyondai Adaien Braxton is an American composer and musician. He has been composing and performing music under his own name and collaboratively under various group titles and collectives since the mid-1990s, including in the experimental rock group Battles from its formation in 2002 until his departure from the group in 2010.
Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member chamber orchestra that focuses on recordings and performances of contemporary classical music. Its performances have been described as "equal parts exuberance, nonchalance, and virtuosity" by the Financial Times and as "a triumph of ensemble playing" by the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times said that Alarm Will Sound is "one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene."
Electric Counterpoint is a minimalist composition by the American composer Steve Reich. The piece consists of three movements, "Fast," "Slow", and "Fast". Reich has offered two versions of the piece: one for electric guitar and tape, the other for an ensemble of guitars. The work shares similarities with Reich's New York Counterpoint.
Drumming is a piece by minimalist composer Steve Reich, dating from 1970–1971. Reich began composition of the work after a short visit to Ghana and observing music and musical ensembles there, especially under the Anlo Ewe master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. His visit was cut short after contracting malaria. Classical music critic K. Robert Schwarz describes the work as "minimalism's first masterpiece".
Sō Percussion is an American percussion quartet formed in 1999 and based in New York City.
Crash Ensemble is an Irish new music ensemble, which performs a range of contemporary classical music, as well as touring and organising festivals.
Fernando Otero is a Grammy-award-winning Argentine pianist, vocalist, and composer.
Dave Maric is a British composer and musician.
Piano and String Quartet is a composition by American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman. It was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet and pianist Aki Takahashi, who premiered the piece at the 7th annual New Music America Festival in Los Angeles and released a studio recording in 1993.
Peter Jarvis is an American percussionist, drummer, conductor, composer, music copyist, print music editor and college professor.
The London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO), founded in 2008 by Hugh Brunt and Robert Ames, is an ensemble of young musicians whose stated aim is "to explore and promote new music to an increasingly wide audience". LCO staged its inaugural season at LSO St Luke's and has since performed at venues and festivals both in the UK and internationally including the Roundhouse, Latitude Festival, The Old Vic Tunnels, Snape Maltings, Southbank Centre, Barbican, Spitalfields Music and Royal Opera House, Yota Space, Unsound Festival. LCO has since worked on films including Theeb, Moonlight, Macbeth (2015), Slow West,The Master, The Two Popes and American Animals (2018).
Colin David Currie is a multi award-winning Scottish virtuoso percussionist. He is the founder and leader of the Colin Currie Group, an ensemble specializing in performing and recording the music of Steve Reich.
Quartet is a 2013 work by American composer Steve Reich. The quartet of musical instruments of the work consists of two pianos and two vibraphones. In 2018, Nonesuch Records released an album consisting of Quartet performed by International Contemporary Ensemble and Pulse performed by Colin Currie Group.
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