Reich, Steve (Stephen Michael Reich), 1936–, American composer, b. New York City. A well-known exponent of minimalism minimalism, schools of contemporary art and music, with their origins in the 1960s, that have emphasized simplicity and objectivity.

Minimalism in the Visual Arts

..... Click the link for more information. , he attended Cornell (B.A., 1957), the Julliard School of Music (1958–61), and Mills College (M.A., 1963), where he studied with Darius Milhaud Milhaud, Darius (däryüs` mēyō`), 1892–1974, French composer. Milhaud studied at the Paris Conservatory.
..... Click the link for more information. and Luciano Berio Berio, Luciano (l
..... Click the link for more information. . Also influenced by John Cage Cage, John, 1912–92, American composer, b. Los Angeles. A leading figure in the musical avant-garde from the late 1930s, he attended Pomona College and later studied with Arnold Schoenberg , Adolph Weiss, and Henry Cowell .
..... Click the link for more information. , he began to create experimental works in the 1960s, showing an interest in electronic and tape-recorded elements. By the late 1960s, he was composing works based on the almost hypnotic repetition of short modular units of minutely changing chords, tonal progressions, chiming timbres, and steady rhythms. He also founded his own ensemble in 1966. Having studied drumming in childhood, he has retained an interest in percussion and has incorporated such instruments as the Balinese gamelan and Ghanian tribal drums into his compositions. Voice is also an important component of many of his works. Critics have noted that over the years his works have become both more intimate, freer, and more expansive. Reich's compositions include the film score for Plastic Haircut (1963), Drumming (1971), Music for 18 Musicians (1974–76), Tehillim (1981), Different Trains (1988), City Life (1994), Proverb (1995), Triple Quartet (1999), Three Tales (2002), and Daniel Variations (2006).

Reich, Steve

orig. Stephen Michael Reich

(born Oct. 3, 1936, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. composer. He majored in philosophy at Cornell University. After musical study with Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio, he pursued interests in Balinese and African music, learning drumming in Ghana. His early music explored the process of simultaneous repeated patterns gradually slipping out of phase (“process music”). With Terry Riley (b. 1935) and Philip Glass, he was among the most prominent of the early “minimalists” of the 1970s. His early works include Drumming (1971) and Music for 18 Musicians (1976); later works such as The Desert Music (1983) and Different Trains (1988) show a considerably expanded compositional vocabulary.

Reich, Steve (1936– ) composer; born in New York City. After musical studies at Juilliard and Mills College (with Berio and Milhaud), he formed a New York ensemble in 1965 to perform his stripped-down, highly repetitive music that was part of the "minimalist" movement. From the small ensembles of his early music, he extended his forces (the Music for 18 Musicians of 1975) and continued to use electronic and mixed-media means (the Different Trains of 1988, for live and taped strings).