Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is part of the time from which it springs. Think about it, in 1976, America had ended the war in Vietnam only a year before.
Culture was changing at a fast clip.
Steve Reich is a percussionist and composer who traveled the world soaking up the rhythms and instrumentation of far-flung places. He studied African drumming at the University of Ghana.
And his "Music for 18 Musicians" comes from a time in the United States when composers were moving away from the dissonance of the mathematical, atonal music of the 1950s and 1960s, said Samantha Bennett.
She and fellow musician George Nickson, who's also her husband, are co-founders of ensembleNewSRQ.
"And so it was a whole different way of looking at what music could do," she said. "And, also the advent of electronic music within this was very new, and was some a direction that people could go in that was truly unique at that time. And so those elements came together. And I think this piece in particular, as George said at the beginning of this, is just probably the most iconic, transformative version of this particular, quite American style of music, of this time."
Steve Reich had this to say about his approach to the work:
"Ever since 'Music for 18 Musicians,' (1974-1976), I have begun composing by working out the harmonic structure of the whole piece first. This allowed the 12 different sections of 'Music for 18 Musicians' to be sketched out in advance, guaranteeing both moment-to-moment variation and overall cohesion in an hourlong composition."
This has been called one of the most important musical works of the 20th century.
Despite its title, there are often more than 18 musicians performing it on stage.
Nickson said the work was Reich's response to electronic music.
"Acoustic instruments are trying to blend together and become one unified, synthesized sound. So yes, there are singers in there who are wordless. They're not speaking words, but they are mimicking the sounds of the instruments," Nickson said.
Like a voice trying to sound like a marimba.
"The instrumentation, in total, is four pianos," Nickson said. "So we have four 9-foot pianos on stage, which is a spectacle by itself. And then we have three marimbas. We have two xylophones, one vibraphone, violin, cello, two clarinets and four female vocalists."
Among them: Classical WSMR's Thea Lobo, a mezzo-soprano who, like Nickson, has performed this Reich piece before — for Reich himself.
EnsembleNewSRQ champions contemporary music. Nickson said they "have a natural kind of connection to American music, because those are the composers that we've been working with frequently, and having been at the Tanglewood Music Center, the home of the Boston Symphony, in the summer, they have a very robust, robust contemporary music program that brings American composers in," he said.
With this performance Friday night at 7:30, not only are they celebrating the 50th anniversary of the work's premiere, but also their own 10th anniversary, Reich's 90th birthday and the 100th anniversary of the Sarasota Opera House, where the concert will be held.
You can get details on this Friday's performance at ensembleNewSRQ website.
