Reich at 70: still rich, and still revolutionary

Oct. 31--We organize our lives in patterns. I woke up this morning and piloted myself through the morning rituals: Put up coffee, rouse the computer, feed the boy, leash the dog, walk to school. The sequence repeats each morning, but it is never quite the same, and it has evolved noticeably in the last year. A different kind of coffee. Fourth grade instead of third. The occasional lurch or interruption.

This weave of pattern and change is what made the music of Steve Reich seem so familiar when it was revolutionary, and what makes it sound so profound even now. Chords change and voices move at processional pace, resisting the inexorable thrum. His pieces feel stately and fast at the same time. They roll along, and when they stop, you ask: "That's it?"

October was Reich month -- he turned 70 on Oct. 3, and the planet celebrated his birthday with live music. New York, his hometown, received a special abundance, and grateful audiences from three generations turned up, some to re-experience radicalism, others to absorb their first dose of that old classical stuff from the 1980s.

Reich wrote his first work of genius, "Drumming," in 1971, and he still operates at a high enough voltage that the past month saw the local premieres of three pieces, including the brand new "Daniel Pearl Variations" and the two-year-old "You Are (Variations)," which the Los Angeles Master Chorale performed at Alice Tully Hall on Saturday.

The latter piece bears all the elements of the Reich brand. Skipping rhythms that obscure the difference between syncopation and beat. Percussive choirs of pianos and marimbas. Unfurling lengths of richly textured sound. Philosophical epigrams slowly sung by amplified voices free of any operatic throb.

It belongs in the same semi-sacramental space as "Tehillim," a setting of the Psalms that Reich wrote 25 years ago and which the Master Chorale performed in the concert's first half. His style has changed the way people do -- imperceptibly but constantly.

Reich began his career with technical obsessions that would have stunted a less imaginative soul. Phase shifting consisted of patterns that began in unison and moved mechanically out of synch. Imagine painting red dots at equal intervals on the wheels of a bicycle: 15 on the front tire, 12 on the back. As the bike moves, the wheels turn at the identical speed, but the dots appear to be moving at different rates.

Over the years his fascination with rigor fused with a sense of drama. "You Are" bears the traces of those early dogmatic years in its repeating chord progression and the austere brevity of its texts. But variations have always been about the gradual acquisition of liberty, and Reich has learned a lot about giving himself some leeway to improvise.

In retrospect, it's amazing that so many intelligent, sensitive musicians didn't initially know what to make of Reich's poker-faced expressiveness. What sounds so vibrant now seemed childish and dumb to the musical establishment in the late 1960s, when complexity was de rigueur. Reich saw that he and his comrades would have to play his music themselves.

All these years later, he still dwelled on those ancient hurts when he spoke to a group of young players who were spending two weeks on his music under the auspices of Carnegie Hall. For them, the rejection he described must have seemed distant and incomprehensible, like the scorn that dolts heaped on Mozart in his day.

Indeed, these kids imbibed his music and Mozart's at the same time, and some have learned to play it better than the composer's original gang. As an advocate for his own music, Reich has been surpassed.

Circumstances prevented me from attending the festival's peak concert at Carnegie Hall, so instead I stretched out on the couch a few days later and let the original Nonesuch recording of "Music for 18 Musicians" pulsate through the room for 70 minutes. It felt like watching a fire in a grate: an elemental release of energy, a sublime monotony spangled with graceful sparks.

REICH@70. A monthlong festival of music by Steve Reich, including Saturday's all-Reich concert at Alice Tully Hall by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon.

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