Recording: Soundstreams

Artist: Soundstreams

Songs: Music for 18 Musicians (two excerpts) [composer: Steve Reich]

Recorded at Massey Hall (Steve Reich at 80), April 14, 2016.

Soundstreams - Music for 18 Musicians [excerpt 1]

Soundstreams - Music for 18 Musicians [excerpt 2]

The centrepiece of Soundscapes' season (with a series of spin-off concerts and other associated events) saw the new music ensemble upsize to a nearly sold-out Massey Hall for this celebration of American composer Steve Reich. Reich lead the evening off himself in a performance of Clapping Music (1972) with Russell Hartenberger — a most minimal act of minimalism from the sound of two sets of hands each clapping out a simple rhythm which slowly shifts for one of the players through a series of repetitions. That elemental percussive act was elaborated upon in the expansive Tehillim (1981) with a quartet of voices and further percussion adding layers of abstracted praise song.

The night's second half was given over to the epic Music for 18 Musicians (1976), a sustained rhythmic exercise in subtly-shifting textures. This performance came out at the longer end of the spectrum of performances of the piece at seventy-two minutes, which is a lot of time for the Reich Curve to rise and fall, rise and fall. Seeing this live involved grooving to the piece on two different (and sometimes contradictory) levels: the trance-inducing rhythms of the gloriously phasing pulses encouraging zone-out bliss while the fact of the performance itself constantly engaging one's attention. To the latter, it was fascinating to see how the eighteen musicians¹, playing without a conductor, handled the heroic regularity that the piece demanded, through musical and physical cues as well as an elaborately-choreographed rotation system that saw musicians trade off spots (and musical duties) as the piece progressed. Fascinating and absorbing — and the piece sounded pretty good in the old house on Shuter, which can sometimes be an acoustically-underwhelming boomy room.

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¹ There was a fascinating mix of musicians in the ensemble, drawing from from the local New Music scene and beyond. For the record, the eighteen musicians were:

• Lesley Bouza, voice
• Michelle DeBoer, voice
• Carla Huhtanen, voice
• Laura Pudwell, voice
• Anthony Thompson, clarinet/bass clarinet
• Lori Freedman, clarinet/bass clarinet
• Jesse Zubot, violin
• David Hetherington, cello
• Simon Docking, piano
• Gregory Oh, piano
• Tania Gill, piano
• Stephanie Chua, piano
• Ryan Scott, percussion
• Russell Hartenberger, percussion
• Garry Kvistad, percussion
• Bob Becker, percussion
• Michelle Colton, percussion
• Haruka Fujii, percussion