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Nearly 25 years before Steve Reich was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Double Sextet, its precursor, Sextet, received its UK premiere in 1986. In London for the event, Reich spoke at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in an interview just made available online through the British Library Sound Archive, along with hundreds of previously unpublished talks with leading cultural figures.
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Twenty-five years before Steve Reich was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his piece Double Sextet, the composer introduced a preliminary version of its precursor, Sextet, at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in December 1984. Members of Nexus, the group that performed the work-in-progress at its world premiere, would go on to join Steve Reich and Musicians for its US premiere in January 1986 and on the original recording for Nonesuch later that year.
In January 1986, Reich, in London for Sextet's UK premiere, sat down for an interview at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He spoke with interviewer Michael Berkeley and fellow composer Gavin Bryars about the new piece and his about his earlier career and influences. The discussion, recorded by the BBC, has now been made available online through the British Library Sound Archive, along with about 1,000 hours of previously unpublished talks and debates with other leading cultural figures, published online for the first time.
It's a fascinating snapshot of the composer's life and work at mid-career, given the vantage point of today, with so much of the composer's now-classic works then yet to be written, from Different Trains to City Life to Daniel Variations, and Double Sextet, the Pulitzer Prize–winning counterpart to the then-new Sextet, still decades away.
Listen to the interview with Steve Reich and discussions with hundreds of other luminaries about art, literature, performance, fashion, film, music, philosophy, psychology, biology, feminism, AIDS, and politics, now available from the British Library at sounds.bl.uk.
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Steve Reich "Sextet / Six Marimbas" [cover]
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