Grammy-winning composer

Steve Reich on campus for lecture, concerts featuring his works Nov. 6-7

Composer Steve Reich will deliver a lecture at 3 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, 1998. Later that evening, the Dutch Percussion Group will perform Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood. On Saturday, Nov. 7, the Brown Orchestra will perform with the Dutch Percussion Group. During this concert, which includes a piece by Reich, the composer will deliver remarks to the audience.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Grammy Award-winning composer Steve Reich will be on the Brown campus Thursday, Nov. 5, through Saturday, Nov. 7, 1998, for a visit that includes three public events:

• On Friday, Nov. 6, at 3 p.m., Reich will present a lecture in Grant Recital Hall.
  
  
• On Friday, Nov. 6, at 8 p.m., the Dutch Percussion Group, visiting from Holland especially for Reich's visit, will perform a program in Sayles Hall featuring Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood and the American debut of Brown University Music Professor Gerald Shapiro's Mouvements Perpetuelles, which Shapiro wrote in honor of Willy Goudswaard, director of the Dutch Percussion Group.
  
  
• On Saturday, Nov. 7, at 8 p.m., the Brown Orchestra, joined by the Dutch Percussion Group, will perform in Sayles Hall. Once again, Reich's music will be featured, along with works by Mozart and Stravinsky. At some point during the concert, Reich will speak to the audience. After the concert, a reception for Reich and the guest performers will be held in Leung Gallery.

The lecture, the two concerts and the reception are open to the public without charge.

While on campus, Reich also will lecture to several music classes and will rehearse with the Brown Orchestra. His visit is supported by several departmental funds, including the Gordon Getty Fund, which was provided by President emeritus Vartan Gregorian to sponsor visits by composers or group of composers to campus.

Music critics from around the world describe Reich's work as groundbreaking. By blending recorded sounds - ranging from the spoken word to the noise of a Manhattan street - with video, singers and ensemble performers, Reich is, in the words of one writer, "building a sturdy musical bridge to the 21st Century" using new technology, ancient rhythms (Reich studied West African drumming and Indonesian gamelan) and oral history.

His 1988 piece, Different Trains, marked a new compositional method in which speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments. The New York Times called Different Trains "a work of such astonishing originality that breakthrough seems the only possible description." In 1990, Reich received a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition for Different Trains as recorded by the Kronos Quartet.

Another work, The Cave, explored the Biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac. It paired Reich's composition with videotaped interviews of Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem and with Americans in New York City and Austin, Texas. Time magazine reporter Michael Walsh called the result "a fascinating glimpse of what opera might be like in the 21st century."