Composer: Steve Reich
Performer: Colin Currie, Colin Currie Group, Synergy Vocals
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Colin Currie Records
Catalogue: CCR0006
Release: 2023
Size: 1.13 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Music for 18 musicians
01. Pulses
02. Section I
03. Section II
04. Section IIIA
05. Section IIIB
06. Section IV
07. Section V
08. Section VI
09. Section VII
10. Section VIII
11. Section IX
12. Section X
13. Section XI
14. Pulses II
One of Steve Reich’s most famous and enduring works, Music for 18 Musicians first captured the imagination of percussionist Colin Currie in the 1980s. Over the years that followed, Currie dutifully built his library of Reich scores and recordings, but it was this work in particular that truly captured his imagination, holding him in it’s epic grasp ever since. Of Reich’s comprehensive catalog, it is this warm and resonant composition that signifies a major breakthrough in the sphere of minimalist music. “The perfect musical beehive” is how Currie describes performing the piece-and it’s easy to see why, with each musician purposefully teasing the material along, playing their own brilliantly contained part, yet contributing to something greater that hums with life. Following the success of his previous albums, “Steve Reich: Drumming” (2018) and “Colin Currie & Steve Reich Live at Fondation Louis Vuitton” (2019), Colin Currie is joined on this album by his closest musical colleagues and companions, the Colin Currie Group and Synergy Vocals, who recorded the work at London’s Abbey Road Studios in 2022.
Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, completed in 1976, is well represented on recordings, including in two versions by Reich himself. Yet there is always room for as fine a performance as this. An examination of a random page in the score for the Music for 18 Musicians might give the impression that it is technically unchallenging, but this is emphatically not true. Percussionist Colin Currie, who leads his Colin Currie Group on this self-released album, has a fortunate metaphor for the work: it is, in his words, “the perfect musical beehive,” and the awesomely complex interactions between its parts are the responsibility of the players. Another way to look at the work is that, despite its large ensemble, it is chamber music, and it demands the rare ability to interact as a string quartet might. The group here delivers impressive results in music that manages to remain lively even as it is precise and transparent; Reich’s chord inversions are clearly audible as they develop and as singers are added to the mix in the persons of the four members of Synergy Vocals (who have worked with Reich before), they are magical. Engineering hounds whom one might quiz about the recording location might fail to identify the Abbey Road Studios in London, but this turns out to be an ideal venue. Those who haven’t heard Reich’s masterpiece for a while are encouraged to check this new version out.