about the composer

Steve Reich (b. 1936) is one of the earliest composers to write in a style that has come to be known as minimalism, or "phase music." From his early taped speech works It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) to The Cave (1993), the first of a series of collaborations with video artist Beryl Korot, Reich's style consists predominantly of short, continuously repeating melodic patterns that slowly shift against each other over time. Reich's 1988 piece Different Trains marked a new compositional method (rooted in his early work) in which speech recordings generate the material for musical instruments.

Born in New York City, and raised there and in California, Reich initially studied drumming at the age of 14 with Roland Kohloff, principal timpanist of the New York Philharmonic. After obtaining a degree in philosophy at Cornell University, he studied composition with Hall Overton in New York (1957-1958), then with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School of Music (1958-1961). Reich continued his education at Mills College in 1963, where he worked with Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio. While at Mills College, Reich developed an interest in Asian music, focusing especially on the musical traditions of Bali and Africa. During the summer of 1970, Reich received a grant from the Institute for International Education which allowed him to study drumming at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra. For the next several years he would focus his attentions on other musical traditions, studying Balinese Semar Pegulingan and Gamelan Gambang at the American Society for Eastern Arts in Seattle and Berkeley, California, and the traditional forms of cantillation (chanting) of the Hebrew scriptures in New York and Jerusalem.

In 1966 Reich founded an ensemble of three musicians for the performance of his own music; the group, named Steve Reich and Musicians, has since grown to comprise between 18 and 40 performers and has frequently toured around the world. Reich's music has also been performed by major international orchestras including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, BBC Symphony, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Over the years, he has received commissions from the Holland Festival, San Francisco Symphony, Rothko Chapel, Pat Metheny, West German Radio, Cologne, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, and Festival d'Automne. Reich's piece City Life, which features many sampled city noises, was commissioned by the Ensemble Modern, the London Sinfonietta, and the Ensemble InterContemporain. Several noted choreographers have also created dances to Reich's music, including Anne Theresa de Keersmacker, Jerome Robbins, Laura Dean, Alvin Ailey, and Lar Lubovitch.

Reich has an exclusive recording contract with the Nonesuch label. In 1997, Nonesuch released a ten-disc retrospective box set, Steve Reich Works: 1965-1995, comprising both previously released material and new recordings.