Can a musical work based on a cycle of only 11 chords become one of the most iconic works of American minimalism?
Steve Reich’s energetic Music for 18 Musicians proves this.
Svømmehallen Scene, an old swimming pool, will be filled up with pulsating rhythms, psychoacoustic effects and shifting harmonies. Steve Reich has been called “America’s greatest living composer” (Village Voice), “the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker), and “among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times). His music is known for steady pulse, repetition, and a fascination with canons; he borrows rhythms from West African drumming and harmonies from bebop, with a variety of other musical influences revealing themselves over the years, including Balinese Gamelan, chanting of Hebrew scripture, and medieval organum.
Often considered Reich’s greatest work, Music for 18 Musicians is a joyful celebration of communal music-making. Performers often lose their sense of individual identity within the collective sound, and listeners emerge at the end of an hour of the meditative music, surprised that it has passed so quickly. Could there be a better place to perform this masterpiece of minimalist music than Svømmehallen Scene? Once built as a "modern and contemporary" building that Bodø city could be proud of.
PROGRAM
Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
PERFORMERS
Musicians from the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra • Norwegian Army Band • Vocal Art
Svømmehallen Scene
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