Life and work
Reich is popularly repute insistent & minimalist, but inside the few works deviates from either a strictly minimalist style, which shows occasionally connection to Minimalism and the act of Reich's ocular creative person friends like Sol Lewitt and Richard Serra.

Reich's music explores such ideas within contemporary music as using tape loops to create phasing patterns — amongst Reich's first works, ''It's Gonna Rain, Come Out, Drumming, and others — and using processes to create and explore concepts in music (Pendulum Music, Four Organs).

Reich achieved the Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1957, attended a Juilliard School and, from 1961 to 1963, Mills College in Oakland, California with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud. His works, particularly Drumming'' (1971), indicate a influence of African music, Reich existence especially influenced by A. M. Jones's Studies in African Music about the music of the Ewe people of Ghana. One of these days he travelled to Ghana to survey drumming. He too exposed Balinese gamelan in Seattle. In this instance he formed his ensemble, Steve Reich & Musicians, which was to exist as a resole ensemble to interpret his works for several years; a class action remains together now by owning numbers of of its original members.

Fallowing Drumming, Reich progress from either a "phase shifting" system that he got pioneered, & began writing further elaborate pieces. He investigated more musical comedy processes like augmentation (the temporal perpetuation of phrases & melodic fragments). It was when you took this period of time that he wrote works like Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973) and Four Organs.

Four Organs deals specifically with augmentation, & was according to the piece written inside 1967, Slow Motion Sound, which was more of the paradigm piece. Getting never been performed, the idea of deceleration down a recorded healthy until numbers of days its original length forgoing changing pitch or even quality was applied to 4 Organs. the effect was the piece sustaining finger cymbals swimming a convenient quaver pulse, while a quaternity organs stress certain quavers applying an Eleventh chord. This operate so dealt by using rhythmical vary & repetition. These are unique in the context of Reich's more pieces within existence linear when opposed to cyclic prefer his earliest works.

Within 1974, Reich began writing what would become classed when his originative function by virtually all, Music for 18 Musicians. This piece taking part much of fresh ideas, although it harked back to sooner pieces. the piece is depending around a cycle of eleven chords introduced at the beginning, followed by the little piece of music depending around both chord, and eventually the go to to the original period. A sections come ably known as "Pulses", Subdivision I personally-XI, & "Pulses". This was Reich's 1st attempt at writing for big ensembles, & the extension of performing artist resulted around a incubation of psycho-acoustic results, which fascinated Reich, and he noted that he would rather to "explore this idea further". Reich remarked that this a single function contained more harmonic movement in the number one 5 minutes so any other operate he got written.

Late that equivalent month he published the book, Writings All about Music, containing essays in his philosophy, esthetic, & musical projects written between 1963 & 1974. An updated collection, Writings In Music (1965-2000), was published inside 2002.

Around 1993, Reich collaborated by using his married woman, a videos creative person Beryl Korot, on an opera, The Cave, which explores the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Them collaborated once again on the opera Three Tales, which concerns the Hindenburg disaster, the researching of nuclear weapons on Bikini Atoll, and further modern concerns, specifically Dolly the sheep, cloning, and a technological singularity.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has created choreography to Reich's works which he has expressed admiration for.

Influence
Reich's style of composition has influenced numbers of more composers & musical organisation, including a rock band King Crimson, a class action of composers associated by using the Bang On A Can festival (including David Lang and Julia Wolfe), and indie rock musician Sufjan Stevens. He has besides influenced ocular creative person like Bruce Nauman.

His music has besides been quite influential to ambient and techno musicians. The melodic line from either his 1987 function Electric Counterpoint was used by The Orb in their 1991 hit Little Fluffy Clouds. This connection has been honoured inside the 1999 album by DJs and electronic musicians, Reich Remixed, freed in Nonesuch Records.

Quotes

"(...) I drove a cab in San Francisco, and in New York I worked as a part-time social worker. Phil Glass and I had a moving company for a short period of time. I did all kinds of odd jobs (...) I started making a living as a performer in my own ensemble. I would never have thought that it was how I was going to survive financially. It was a complete wonder."

"I had grown up with what I often refer to as the “middle class favorites�: Beethoven’s Fifth [Symphony], Schubert’s Unfinished [Symphony], … Broadway shows. I’d never heard any music composed before 1750 and I’d never heard any music composed after 1900. I’d never heard any jazz. (...) (then) I heard recordings of the “Rite of Spring�, the [[Brandenburg concertos|Fifth Brandenburg [Concerto] ]], Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and the drummer Kenny Clarke. And it was very much as if you’d lived in a house and someone said, “Well, you’re 14 now and there’s a room in the house you haven’t seen.� They opened the door, I walked in the room, and I never really left."

From either an locate by owning Gabrielle Zuckerman, 2002 (watch Links)

"The point is, if you went to Paris and dug up Debussy and said, “Excusez-moi Monsieur…are you an impressionist? �, he’d probably say “Merde!� and go back to sleep. That is a legitimate concern of musicologists, music historians, and journalists, and it’s a convenient way of referring to me, Riley, Glass, La Monte Young (...) it’s become the dominant style. But, anybody who’s interested in French Impressionism is interested in how different Debussy and Ravel and Satie are - and ditto for what’s called minimalism. (...) Basically, those kind of words are taken from painting and sculpture, and applied to musicians who composed at the same period as that painting and sculpture was made(...)."

From either an Locate by owning Rebecca Y. Kim, 2000, [http://www.stevereich.com www.stevereich.com]

Notable works

''It's Gonna Rain, tape (1965) Come Out, tape (1966) Piano Phase for even ii pianos, or two xylophone (1967) Violin Phase for even violin & tape or quatern fiddle (1967) Pendulum Music (1968) 4 Organs for tetrad electric organs & bones (1970) Drumming for 4 pairs of tuned bongo drums, Tierce xylophone, Tercet orchestral bells, Ii female voices, whistling & piccolo (1970/1971) Six Pianos (1973) - Transcribed as Six Marimbas (1986) Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973) Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76) Music for a Large Ensemble (1978) Octet (1979) - arranged for ensemble as Eight Lines (1983) Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards for orchestra (1979) Tehillim for voices and ensemble (1981) The Desert Music for even chorus & orchestra or voices and ensemble (1984, text by William Carlos Williams) Sextet for percussion and keyboards (1984) Future York Contrast for even amplified clarinet & tape, or Eleven clarinets (1985) Electric Counterpoint for electric guitar or amplified acoustic guitar & tape (1987, for Pat Metheny) Different Trains for string quartet & tape (1988) A Cave (1993, by using Beryl Korot) City Life for amplified ensemble (1995) Adage for voices & ensemble (1995, text by Ludwig Wittgenstein) Triple Quartet for even even amplified string quartet (using pre-recorded tape), or trinity string quartette, or string orchestra (1998) Three Tales (1998-2002, with Beryl Korot) Dance System for Two marimba, Deuce vibraharp & Two pianos (2002) Cello Contrast for amplified violoncello & multichannel tape (2003) You Are (Variations)'' for voices and chamber orchestra (2004) New piece for trinity string quartette, foursome vibraharp, & ii pianos (2005)