Reich Phase. Chamber Music Event at Hanzas Perons

On two evenings, October 3 and 4, the cultural venue “Hanzas Perons” will mark the birthday of American composer Steve Reich with the chamber music event “Reich Phase” in a space created by artist Miķelis Mūrnieks.

His greatness is a fact. His reputation as a pillar of contemporary, or art, music is carved in stone. The impact he has had on others, on the world, is enormous, even if at first glance we do not feel it like a finger poked in the eye. Steve Reich has admirers and followers among listeners and among other artists in jazz, popular and electronic music, even hip-hop. Many do not think so, but come to that conclusion. So does the well-known critic Alex Ross, who, in pleasant helplessness, finds himself living in a world with a soundtrack created by the Master, since his presence keeps lighting up around us from time to time - in TV commercials, in films, in nightclubs... After all, it is thanks precisely to Steve Reich that we tend to hear the human-made and industrialized world, with all its inherent sounds, including the sound of a moving train, as music. He has a round birthday this autumn. In celebration and as a greeting to the composer, his “phase” will take over at Hanzas Perons.

On both evenings of “Reich Phase,” those present will have the chance to experience chamber music works significant in the composer’s output, though not so well known in our part of the world, from different periods of his creative career. Violinist Marta Spārniņa will perform “Violin Phase” (1967), one of Steve Reich’s early works for solo violin and tape, which today, almost 60 years later, has become the most striking testament to the author’s “phasing period.” “Perons Quartet” - Konstantīns Paturskis (violin), Aleksejs Bahirs (violin), Pēteris Trasuns (viola) and Dace Zālīte-Zilberte (cello) - will give the Latvian premiere of the master’s tribute to the memory of those killed in the September 11 terror attacks, the string quartet “WTC 9/11” (2010). With conductor Normunds Šnē on the podium, “Sinfonietta Rīga” and the musicians of “Perons Percussion,” together with pianists Rihards Plešanovs and Evelīna Jēkabsone, as well as the vocal quartet led by Viktorija Majore, will perform the monumental work “Tehillim” (1981).

Steve Reich can be called and perceived in different ways. As a minimalist, as a genius, as a living classic, as a perceptive, demanding and perhaps at times also uncompromising composer toward his listeners. But the birthday greeting, or “Reich Phase,” is inspired by the composer as a creator of unexpected and fundamentally new circumstances. Just as Steve Reich does not write into the notes what is heard and experienced in his music, leaving that to each listener’s attention, so too the ebb after the first weekend of October promises to reveal several possible situations. The feeling of a celebrated composer’s birthday, musical premieres experienced, or waking up in a world with changed rules, with the foundations just laid for tomorrow’s castles in the air, or in the ruins of houses built on illusion.