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I thought some of you might find this interesting.
A brief history of the legend himself, Steve Reich:
http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/comp...composerid=2781
And a very, but very interesting article from the fine e-zine, "The Monobrow."
These days, it seems that anyone who strings a few loops together and then sticks the whole lot through the Supatrigga and Bouncy plugins from Smartelectronix can call themselves 'minimal'.
The music world is currently rather obsessed with the concept, from the Pet Shop Boys ode to the term to the rather infuriating trend in dance music to shove the word minimal infront of any formerly oversaturated sub-genre to instantly render it relevant in the 21st century (see minimal techno, minimal electro, minimal trance, minimal house, minimal skiffle...).
In fact, as eMusic puts it in their excellent guide to the key works of the Miminalism movement, "much of 20th-century popular music has been 'minimalist'". What the twelve very different albums highlighted in the eMusic article have in common however is their truly artistic exploration and genuine engagement with the principles of Minimalism, rather than simply drafting in the term in a bid to sell more records as has become par for the course in recent years.
The elder statesman of the Minimalism movement, Mr Steve Reich, is 70 years old this year, and in celebration of this fact a series of performances of his works have been held across the globe, including some appearances from Reich himself and his own band of 18 musicians. His current European stint takes in the Casa de Musica in Porto, Portugal (12th November), Vilnius in Lithuania (November 20th), and various events across France: Cite de la Musique, Paris (14th); La Comete, Chalons en Champagne (15th); Theatre de Caen, Caen (16th) as part of the Nordik Impakt festival; and MC2, Grenoble (18th).
gemma sheppard, 2nd Nov 2006 16:17:18 (www.themonobrow.com)
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