CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Steve Reich 80th Birthday
Three Tales
Steve Reich, Music
Beryl Korot, Video
Performers
David Robertson, Conductor
ICE
Sō Percussion
·· Eric Cha-Beach
·· Josh Quillen
·· Adam Sliwinski
·· Jason Treuting
Synergy Vocals
Nick Mangano, Director
Program
ALL-STEVE REICH PROGRAMQuartet
Pulse (World Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
Three Tales (Video by Beryl Korot)
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.Watch
A zeppelin explodes, a nuclear bomb is tested, a sheep is cloned, and a robot casts its beatific gaze on you. Three Tales, a visionary opera created by Steve Reich with video artist Beryl Korot, has it all.
Sponsored by DeWitt Stern, a Risk Strategies Company
Lead support for the 125 Commissions Project is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Public support for the 125 Commissions Project is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional funding is provided by members of Carnegie Hall's Composer Club.
Steve Reich is the holder of the 2016–2017 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall.
Steve Reich
Reich’s musical legacy has been influential on composers and mainstream musicians all over the world. His music is known for steady pulse, repetition, and a fascination with canons; it combines rigorous structures with propulsive rhythms and seductive instrumental color, and also embraces harmonies of non-Western and American vernacular music (especially jazz). His studies have included Balinese gamelan, African drumming (at the University of Ghana), and traditional forms of chanting of the Hebrew scriptures, in addition to his studies at Cornell University, The Juilliard School, and Mills College with Luciano Berio.
Different Trains and Music for 18 Musicians have each earned Grammy Awards, and Double Sextet won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
Reich’s documentary video opera works—The Cave and Three Tales, done in collaboration with video artist Beryl Korot—have pushed the boundaries of the operatic medium and have been presented on four continents.
Reich’s music has been performed by major orchestras and ensembles around the world, including the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics; London, Sydney, San Francisco, Boston, and BBC symphony orchestras; London Sinfonietta; Kronos Quartet; Ensemble Modern; Ensemble Intercontemporain; Bang on a Can All-Stars; Alarm Will Sound; and Eighth Blackbird. Several noted choreographers have created dances to his music, such as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Jiří Kylián, Jerome Robbins, Wayne McGregor, Justin Peck, and Christopher Wheeldon.
Reich was awarded the Gold Medal in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2012. He was named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, as well as a member in the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. His honors include the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo, the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, the BBVA Foundation Award in Madrid, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, the 2016 Nemmers Prize in Music Composition from Northwestern University, as well as the William Schuman Award from Columbia University, the Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College, and the Regent’s Lectureship at the University of California at Berkeley. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Royal College of Music in London, The Juilliard School, the Liszt Academy in Budapest, and the New England Conservatory, among others.
The 2016–2017 season marks Reich’s 80th birthday, with over 400 performances in more than 20 countries across the globe celebrating his music and legacy. Two new works receive world premieres in fall 2016: Pulse, which receives its premiere with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) conducted by David Robertson at Carnegie Hall; and Runner, which is performed at London’s Royal Ballet accompanied by new choreography by Wayne McGregor. Several presenters have announced special concert series and residencies to honor his anniversary, including Lincoln Center, San Francisco Symphony, the Barbican in London, Tokyo Opera City, and Carnegie Hall, which has named Reich the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair for the 2016–2017 season.
Born in New York, and raised there and in California, Reich graduated with honors in philosophy from Cornell University in 1957. For the next two years, he studied composition with Hall Overton, and from 1958 to 1961, he studied at the Juilliard School of Music with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. Reich received his master’s degree in music from Mills College in 1963, where he worked with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud.
“There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them” (The Guardian).
Bios
Beryl Korot
Beryl Korot is a pioneer of video art and of multiple-channel work in particular. Her
lifelong practice brought the modern world of video technology into conversation with the
ancient hand loom by applying specific structures inherent to loom programming to the
programming of multiple channels. She has created a body of work on handwoven canvas that
encoded a visual language based on the grid structure of woven cloth and is currently
creating drawings that incorporate digital embroidery.
Co-founder and co-editor of Radical Software (1970-1974), the first publication
to discuss the technical and formal possibilities of the new medium, Korot was also
co-editor of Video Art: An Anthology (1976). Her first multiple-channel
works--Dachau 1974 and Text and Commentary--have been exhibited at The
Kitchen (1975); Leo Castelli Gallery and Documenta 6 (1977); Whitney Museum of American Art
(1980 and 2002); Kölnischer Kunstverein (1989); Carnegie Museum of Art (1990); The Aldrich
Contemporary Art Museum (2010); bitforms gallery (2012); Whitworth Art Gallery and Museum
Abteiberg (2013); Art Basel, Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and Tate Modern
(2014); Wexner Center for the Arts (2015); and the new San Francisco MOMA (2016).
Other video installations and works have been exhibited at the Hood Museum, Dartmouth
College (2014); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2014); Locks Gallery in
Philadelphia (2013); DMZ Museum in South Korea (2005); and Historisches Museum Frankfurt
(2001), among others. Two collaborations with Steve Reich--The Cave and Three
Tales--brought video-installation art into a theatrical context and toured worldwide.
Both works continue to be performed throughout the world and have been exhibited as video
installations at the Whitney Museum, Carnegie Museum, Reina Sofia, Kunstverein Düsseldorf,
and ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 2010, a mini retrospective of her work was exhibited for
six months at The Aldrich.
Korot's work is in both private and public collections. Text and Commentary was
acquired in 2015 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; Dachau 1974 is in
the Kramlich Collection's New Art Trust (shared by the San Francisco and New York City
museums of modern art, and Tate Modern) and Thoma Art Foundation, among others. She is a
1994 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of numerous honors, including grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts and Anonymous Was a Woman. In 2000, she was a Montgomery Fellow at
Dartmouth College with Steve Reich; in 2011, she was artist-in-residence at Dartmouth
College.
David Robertson
David Robertson is one of today's most sought-after conductors, celebrated worldwide as a
champion of contemporary composers, an ingenious and adventurous programmer, and a
masterful communicator whose passionate and compelling advocacy for the art form is widely
recognized. This marks Mr. Robertson's 12th season as music director of the storied,
137-year-old St. Louis Symphony. He also serves as chief conductor and artistic director of
the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia.
Mr. Robertson has solidified the St. Louis Symphony's standing as one of the nation's most
enduring and innovative orchestras. His established relationships with artists and
composers is deeply rooted, and is evidenced by the St. Louis Symphony's strong
relationship with composer John Adams. Their 2014 release of City Noir (Nonesuch
Records)--featuring works by Adams performed by the St. Louis Symphony with Mr.
Robertson--won the Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance. Adams's violin symphony,
Scheherazade.2, performed by Leila Josefowicz with Mr. Robertson leading the St.
Louis Symphony, was released last month on Nonesuch.
Highlights of Mr. Robertson's 2016-2017 season with the St. Louis Symphony include a
Carnegie Hall performance of Adams's The Gospel According to the Other Mary as
part of a celebration of the composer's 70th birthday. Mr. Robertson and the symphony hold
a season-long celebration of Adams, highlighted by Ms. Josefowicz's performance of the
composer's Violin Concerto at Powell Hall. This performance will also be recorded by
Nonesuch, and is scheduled for release in 2017.
Born in Santa Monica, California, Mr. Robertson was educated at London's Royal Academy of
Music, where he studied horn and composition before turning to orchestral conducting. He
received Columbia University's 2006 Ditson Conductor's Award, and he and the St. Louis
Symphony have been recipients of several major awards from ASCAP and the League of American
Orchestras. Musical America named Mr. Robertson Conductor of the Year for 2000. In
2010, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the most
prestigious honorary societies in the United States.
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective committed to
transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator,
ICE explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. The ensemble's 35
members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with
the foremost musical artists of our time. Emerging composers have anchored ICE's
programming since its founding in 2001, and the group's recordings and digital platforms
highlight the many voices that weave music's present.
ICE has received the American Music Center's Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music
America / ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, and was also named Musical
America Ensemble of the Year in 2014. The group currently serves as
artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart festival and previously led a
five-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. ICE has been featured at
the Ojai Music Festival since 2015, and has appeared abroad at festivals such as Acht
Brücken Cologne and Musica nova Helsinki. Other recent performance stages include the Park
Avenue Armory, The Stone, ice floes at Greenland's Diskotek Sessions, and boats on the
Amazon River.
New initiatives include OpenICE, made possible with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, which offers admission-free concerts and related programming wherever ICE
performs, and online through DigitICE, the ensemble's streaming video library. OpenICE
allows a working process with composers to enfold in public settings, and audiences are
included in the spark of musical invention. ICE's First Page program is a commissioning
consortium that fosters close collaborations between performers, composers, and listeners
as new music is developed. EntICE, a side-by-side education project, places ICE musicians
within youth orchestras as they premiere new commissioned works together. Inaugural EntICE
partners include Youth Orchestra Los Angeles and The People's Music School (Chicago).
Yamaha Artist Services, New York, is the exclusive piano provider for ICE. For more
information, visit iceorg.org.
Synergy Vocals
Synergy Vocals started out as a quartet of female singers who performed Tehillim
for Steve Reich's 60th birthday concert in London in 1996. Twenty years later, the group
comprises a substantial pool of singers who are able to deliver a broad repertoire in a
variety of styles. The group specializes in close-microphone singing and is often
associated with the music of Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, Steven Mackey, and Luciano
Berio, performing regularly with Ensemble Modern, Ictus, Ensemble Intercontemporain, London
Sinfonietta, and the Colin Currie Group.
Synergy has given concerts all over the world with orchestras and ensembles, including the
New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis
Symphony, New World Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Brooklyn
Philharmonic, Steve Reich and Musicians, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony
Orchestra, Percussion Claviers de Lyon, Asko|Schönberg, Hebrides Ensemble, London Symphony
Orchestra, and all five of the UK's BBC orchestras. Synergy has also collaborated with the
Royal Ballet in London, Rosas in Brussels, and Opéra de Paris.
The group's world premieres include Reich's Three Tales and Daniel
Variations, Mackey's Dreamhouse, Andriessen's video opera La
Commedia, David Lang's writing on water, and James MacMillan's Since it
was the day of Preparation …, as well as the UK premiere of Nono's monumental
Prometeo on London's South Bank.
In addition to live concerts and recordings, the group has undertaken educational and
outreach projects in the UK, Netherlands, US, and South America, coaching vocal ensembles
and workshopping new works for voices. Micaela Haslam--who serves as Synergy Vocals'
director--also coaches ensembles in preparation for Reich's Music for 18
Musicians.
Synergy Vocals is featured on a variety of film and UK television soundtracks. Commercial
recordings of the group include the 2011 Grammy-winning Dreamhouse by Mackey,
Since it was the day of Preparation ... by MacMillan, De Staat by
Andriessen (with London Sinfonietta), Three Tales by Reich, La Commedia
by Andriessen (with Asko|Schönberg), Kompendium's Beneath the Waves, These New
Puritans' Field of Reeds, Rob Reed's Sanctuary, and Steven Wilson's
Grace for Drowning. The group's most recent release is Berio's Sinfonia with the
BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Josep Pons. For more information, visit
synergyvocals.com.
Nick Mangano
Nick Mangano is happy to continue a longtime association with Steve Reich and Beryl Korot,
having directed The Cave at Lincoln Center and on tour, and the world premiere and
international tour of Three Tales, including a recent concert version for the Los
Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Over the years, he has worked on and off
Broadway, and in major regional theaters throughout the United States. His directing work
includes classical, modern, and original work, and he has received critical acclaim in
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Opera News, among
other publications.
Mangano has taught and/or directed at Yale University, the American Conservatory Theater
(ACT) in San Francisco, The College of Santa Fe, the University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), and Stony Brook University. He holds a bachelor's in
history from Hunter College (Phi Beta Kappa) and a master's in directing from the Columbia
University School of the Arts.
David Bullard
David Bullard's sound design credits include Ainadamar (Frost School of Music);
The Secret Garden (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and Center Stage in
Baltimore); Three Tales (Los Angeles Philharmonic); Anything Goes
(national tour); A Little Night Music (NYU); Men's Lives (Bay
Street Theater); Ninth and Joanie (Labyrinth Theater Company); Amadeus
(Old Globe Theatre); One Night Only: A Night with Al Pacino (international tour);
On Golden Pond (national tour); and The Unexpected Man (New York and Los
Angeles). His associate design credits include The Phantom of the Opera (North
American tour) and War Horse (North American tour and Berlin). Mr. Bullard's
associate design credits on Broadway include Sondheim on Sondheim; A Little
Night Music; Sweeney Todd; Assassins; Pacific Overtures;
Road Show; West Side Story; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling
Bee; Gem of the Ocean; and Radio Golf.
Matt Frey
In addition to Three Tales, Matt Frey also
has worked with Steve Reich and Beryl Korot on The Cave. He primarily works on new
music projects and new plays.
Benjamin Furiga
Benjamin Furiga is the principal at Furiga Sound Design and Consulting, LLC, which
provides design, engineering, and production audio services to such varied clients as
Lincoln Center Festival, Daryl Roth Theatrical Management, and IAC. He doesn't practice as
much as you might expect.