Steve Reich will be a special guest of the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York, tonight, for a screening of the documentary Steve Reich, Phase to Face, and the Opening Night of the center's Sounds of Summer series of music documentaries. Reich will be interviewed by WNYC's John Schaefer, who chaired the jury that chose Reich's Double Sextet for the Pulitzer Prize. Nonesuch will release a recording of that piece, paired with 2x5, later this year.
Steve Reich is the subject of a new documentary from French filmmaker Éric Darmon titled Steve Reich, Phase to Face, which will be shown at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York, tonight, for the Opening Night of the center's month-long Sounds of Summer series of new music documentaries. Reich will be a special guest at the event, where he will be interviewed by John Schaefer, host of WNYC's Soundcheck and host and producer of the New York NPR affiliate's new-music show, New Sounds, and participate in a Q&A.
The Jacob Burns Film Center describes the composer as "that rarest of phenomena, a modern classical composer whose influence has radiated out from Brian Eno to King Crimson to Bang on a Can to Sufjan Stevens." Steve Reich, Phase to Face, filmed in English and French with subtitles, examines the process and development of Reich's unique rhythmic style, and even captures the composer on the morning he learns of his having won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music for the piece Double Sextet. (Coincidentally, Schaefer chaired the jury that selected the piece for the Pulitzer, which also included Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang.) Later this year, Nonesuch Records will release a recording of Double Sextet, performed by eighth blackbird, paired with Reich's 2009 piece 2x5, performed by Bang on a Can.
You can watch a short excerpt from the film, including a look at Reich in a rehearsal of 2x5 with Bang on a Can, here:
Also showing this summer at the Jacob Burns as part of the Sounds of Summer series is Stop Making Sense, the seminal 1984 Talking Heads concert film directed by Jonathan Demme, and Ride, Rise, Roar, a more recent look at former Talking Heads front man David Byrne in concert, which follows him and his troupe of musicians and dancers across last year's Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno tour. Also showing at the center today as part of its regular programming is the new film I Am Love, featuring music by John Adams.
For more information on these and other films in the series, head to burnsfilmcenter.org. You can read more about Reich's Pulitzer Prize win in a Nonesuch Journal from last year.
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