Composer Steve Reich talks about creating his 1970–71 piece Drumming in a new video by Jesse Yang from Reich's publisher Boosey & Hawkes. Reich worked on Drumming, which turned out to be the longest piece he ever composed, for one year, between the fall of 1970 and the fall of 1971. Steve Reich and Musicians gave the world premiere performance of Drumming at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City that December and recorded the piece in 1987 for Nonesuch. The Village Voice hailed Drumming as “the most important work of the whole minimalist music movement.”

The 1987 recording of Drumming, released two years after Steve Reich made his first album on Nonesuch and was signed exclusively to the label, can be heard here and is included in the forthcoming Steve Reich Collected Works, a twenty-seven disc box set, due March 14. Collected Works features music recorded during the composer's forty years on the label—six decades of his compositions, including first recordings of his two latest works, Jacob’s Ladder and Traveler’s Prayer—plus two extensive booklets with new essays by Robert Hurwitz, Michael Tilson Thomas, Russell Hartenberger, Judith Sherman, and Nico Muhly, and a comprehensive listener’s guide by Timo Andres. Collected Works includes twenty-four discs of Nonesuch recordings and three from other labels. You can pre-order it here.