(Colin Currie Group perform Steve Reich’s Quartet) Steve Reich’s ninetieth anniversary year would not be complete without a world premiere. Or two, as was the case in this evening’s all-Reich concert at Usher Hall, Edinburgh. There again, a Reich premiere would not be complete without the Colin Curry Group either, with Quartet (also on the programme) and Traveler’s Prayer previous co-commissions for Currie’s group. Forming part of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, these two new compositions – Two Pianos and the stirring, spectacular In All Your Ways – appeared in either half of the program. More on that later. The

The Prom on August 20 commemorated the centennial of Miles Davis’s birth. Davis was undoubtedly one of the greatest and most important musicians of the 20th century, but he was not a composer and not just a performer. He was a composing performer, who probably never played the same thing the same way twice. His playing is known to many people, just about everybody now, through his recordings, which were a single example of how he would have done something, and which are also very much a product of his work with arrangers, most especially Gil Evans. It is their

The Proms concert on August 10 was presented by an orchestra consisting of students from the Juilliard School in New York and the Royal Academy of Music, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, with Vilde Frang as violin soloist. The program consisted of works by three of the most imporant composers of the early twentieth century, Igor Stravinsky (Symphony in Three Movements, 1942-45), Alban Berg (Violin Concerto, 1935, and Béla Bartok, Concerto for Ochestra, 1943-rev 1945). The Stravinsky, written after his move to California is a reaction not only to the ongoing world war (the program notes quoted Stravinsky in one of

My Steve Reich odyssey has taken me to several cities so far this year, including Liverpool, Manchester, London, Cologne and New York, so it seemed fitting that at least one event marking the composer’s ninetieth anniversary year should happen closer to my doorstep, in Wales. In fact, it’s a two-hour drive from where I live to Aberystwyth, where Solem Quartet and singer Alice Zawadzki were performing as part of this year’s Musicfest Festival. Driving down the northwest coast of Wales towards Aberystwyth (through some astonishingly beautiful scenery, where the mountains tumble into the sea), it struck me that perhaps Reich’s

Alongside Steve Reich’s Violin Phase (1967), Philip Glass’ Strung Out (1968) ranks as early minimalism’s most important work for solo violin. However, unlike Violin Phase—which has received countless performances and several recordings during its nearly sixty-year shelf life—Strung Out has largely gone unnoticed. This twenty-minute work has remained something of an outlier, consigned to the periphery of Glass’ back catalogue. Even when I’ve discussed Strung Out with violinists who frequently perform Glass, several have admitted to not knowing about it. This definitive new release by gifted and versatile violinist Darragh Morgan will surely dispel any lingering doubts about the significance of this piece. It may not

Improvisation, especially of the largely unplanned and entirely freeform variety, can be a bit hit-and-miss, particularly when it becomes apparent that the performers aren’t singing (or playing) from the same hymn sheet. Nevertheless, when collective interactions click into place—as on this seven-track mini-album by Alexander Varty on guitar & electronics, Andres Kahre on percussion and electric cello, and violin virtuoso Jack M Campbell—the results can be truly striking and illuminating. No Room For Error came about through a serendipitous encounter between Campbell and longtime collaborators Varty and Kahre on Gabriola Island (which lies in the Strait of Georgia in British

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, music took another turn on its ambient axis, and ‘post-classical’ was born. Mark Prendergast had already claimed the previous century to be the ambient century, with everything from Mahler to Trance falling under its all-encompassing sonic spell. One nevertheless suspects that, had Prendergast published his book a few years later, he may have been persuaded to call it The Long Ambient Century, such was ambient and its offshoots’ enduring appeal to post-millennial listeners. For better or worse, performers and musicians from Chilly Gonzales, Peter Broderick, Nils Frahm, Johann Jóhannsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir to Ólafur