For half a century, Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians has been a sort of perpetual movement machine: an intricately interlocking, endlessly renewable composition whose patterns shimmer and shift whilst they circle again to the place they started. For its fiftieth anniversary — and Reich’s ninetieth birthday — conductor/director Alan Pierson took that cyclical logic fairly actually, turning the totally distinctive, landmark work right into a three-and-a-half-hour communal expertise at New York’s Park Avenue Armory. Titled Music for 18 Musicians: Staged Variations, the October manufacturing introduced the piece thrice in uninterrupted succession, every efficiency entrusted to a unique era of musicians: members of the unique Steve Reich Ensemble, college students from the Manhattan College of Music’s Tactus program and Pierson’s personal pioneering new music group, Alarm Will Sound.
However this was greater than an endurance take a look at or an elaborate anniversary tribute. With musicians steadily transferring outward from the middle of the Armory’s huge Wade Thompson Drill Corridor and ultimately surrounding the viewers, Pierson conceived the three cycles as a sort of human life span. The unique ensemble introduced many years of authority to the music; the scholars equipped an exuberant, bodily demanding interpretation that challenged typical concepts about how the piece might be carried out (assume: somebody operating in circles whereas holding maracas and by no means dropping a beat); and Alarm Will Sound closed the night with a extra reflective, ritualistic studying. In between, a brand new commissioned work by Caroline Shaw supplied a transition between generations. The end result made plainly seen the exceptional neighborhood that has grown round Reich’s composition — and the best way its emotional potentialities proceed to resume themselves with every encounter.
For Pierson, whose relationship with Music for 18 Musicians dates to his days finding out on the Eastman College of Music, the undertaking was additionally the belief of a long-held ambition to disclose the work’s underlying simplicity and put listeners inside its musical organism. In dialog with SPIN, he discusses the inspiration behind Staged Variations, the unlikely challenges of manufacturing a famously intricate rating in movement, the extraordinary dedication of the younger musicians who helped make it attainable and why a chunk he has lived with for many years can nonetheless meet him — and its viewers — precisely the place they’re.
A celebration of Music for 18 Musicians might have taken many various varieties. How did you and your collaborators arrive on the thought of staging it three distinct instances in a single night? What drew you to that idea, and what did the bodily area of the Armory add to the expertise?
The very first flash of inspiration was to honor the fiftieth anniversary of Music for 18 Musicians by staging the work as a durational, cyclical, evolving expertise. The elements of the piece that bought me fired up about this concept have been: first, its cyclical construction — it ends precisely the way it started; second, its emotional polymorphousness — it makes area for and resonates with wide-ranging emotional expertise; and third, its standing as a cultural icon — it’s music that individuals adore, and that stands as much as repeated listenings. So many artists and followers of my era grew up listening to it obsessively on a loop. I’ve had a few of the most profound inventive experiences of my life at durational occasions like Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade Historical past of Widespread Music (the place I met my husband in 2026, and which I now conduct), and I knew there was a profound durational expertise to be created with this music.
The Armory was the one place I might think about doing it. New York was clearly the place to have a good time this anniversary: Reich is a New York establishment, and his growth within the Sixties and ’70s was inextricably linked to town; and particularly since I wished to middle the generations of artists who’ve grown up round his work, this all wanted to occur right here. I wished to precise Reich’s musical organism by means of staging, and to place the viewers within the midst of that organism. That meant a giant, versatile area, with an establishment outfitted to make music at that scale. All of that added as much as only one venue: New York’s Park Avenue Armory.
I didn’t initially have a transparent sense of precisely what number of instances we’d play the piece. My first thought (in all probability because of the Taylor Mac inspiration) was 24! However then I assumed possibly 12 or six can be sufficient? I began surveying gamers in AWS what number of instances they may think about enjoying the piece in a single day, and the way a lot break they’d want in between. Three was really the shortest period I might think about that might talk my imaginative and prescient for Staged Variations. It took 9 months to really get right into a room to debate the concept with the Armory’s Inventive Director, Pierre Audi. Pierre listened thoughtfully to my pitch, after which rapidly put to relaxation my uncertainty about what number of instances to play the piece: we’d do it thrice, he stated.
What distinctive components did every ensemble carry to the piece? I used to be notably intrigued by the scholars from Tactus, who added a component of bodily motion I’d by no means seen in Music for 18 Musicians.
As soon as Pierre established that we’d play the piece thrice, the broad form of the expertise rapidly turned clear to me. It’d begin within the middle of the area, steadily transfer outward — expressing the emanation of the piece into the cultural world — and ultimately encompass the viewers, although with the piano/marimba pulse heartbeat holding quick on the middle of the area the entire time. The primary time can be a traditional, typical efficiency by the musicians who’ve been enjoying it for the previous half-century; the second can be an exuberant staging of Music for 18 as a collaborative neighborhood, expressing the music’s pleasure and love; and the third can be reflective and ritualistic, expressing the music’s timeless, transcendent soul. Somewhat impressed by the form of Donancha Dennehy’s Land of Winter, the general arc can be like the form of a life: from youth, to the passionate power of early maturity and eventually to a sort of transcendent peace.
Every group introduced one thing particular to that journey. The Reich Ensemble introduced their many years of authority and expertise. There’s a magical sort of calm confidence that OG ensemble members Bob Becker and Russ Hartenberger carry every time they’re standing on the marimbas, enjoying that Music for 18 pulse. Alarm Will Sound introduced a sort of mastery that comes from rising up in a musical world already reworked by Reich’s work. We actually wanted that for that last hour of the occasion, the place the ensemble needed to play at most velocity and most distance, whereas additionally embodying a way of floating, timeless peace. No small feat!
But it surely was all the time clear to me that the second rendition was going to be probably the most demanding and impressive. The exuberant staging I used to be envisioning for this second hour of Music for 18 was unprecedented (50 years after its composition, skilled ensembles nonetheless battle simply to maintain performances on the rails, and the standard knowledge was that the best way to make the music work was for everybody to be as shut as attainable, and to concentrate on enjoying collectively.) Even I wasn’t completely positive my staging imaginative and prescient was attainable — Steve was satisfied that it wasn’t! — and it was definitely going to be a high-wire act.
This meant a prolonged and deep course of: memorizing and internalizing the music so properly that it turned second nature, after which creating and finessing the extremely bodily staging collaboratively. I imagined this is able to take a 12 months, and {that a} prime music college can be the right associate: I’d accomplished the piece with pupil teams through the years and noticed how simply this music got here to younger musicians in the present day. Plus, there was a beautiful resonance right here within the story of the manufacturing: Alarm Will Sound’s musicians had first performed the piece once we have been in class (the place it was a lot tougher for us than it’s for in the present day’s era of scholars!), and the unique Steve Reich and Musicians have been principally of their 20s after they workshopped the piece with Steve over two years within the Nineteen Seventies.
I used to be thrilled that Matt Ward on the Manhattan College’s Modern Efficiency Program was sport to leap on board and manage his college students for the undertaking. As luck would have it, they have been already attempting to prepare a efficiency there for February 2026, which gave the scholars an opportunity to construct confidence with the music and the memorization far forward of the staged manufacturing. I first met with these Tactus musicians in October 2025, a 12 months earlier than the manufacturing. They’ve introduced huge power, love, and devotion to the undertaking. By the tip, they so owned their staging and their efficiency that I didn’t even really feel I wanted to rehearse them. I used to be simply awed by how simple this impossible-seeming endeavor turned of their palms. Watching them do that extremely virtuosic, bodily staging, and concurrently giving the smoothest, most constant, steady, and finessed efficiency of the piece I’d seen … it nonetheless blows my thoughts. The staging really appeared to make the music simpler for them to play.
It’s been deeply emotional to observe their journey with Music for 18. Their efficiency was meant to precise the piece’s communal spirit and its love; and over the 12 months of labor, that spirit and that love appeared to infuse the entire ensemble. They actually turned a household. You may really feel the love they’ve for one another by means of all of their interactions. It jogged my memory a variety of Alarm Will Sound’s early time collectively 25 years in the past. They gave their last efficiency of the piece the morning after the remainder of the manufacturing wrapped, in a Monday morning instructional efficiency for a gaggle of New York Metropolis highschool college students. I principally cried for the complete hour. I so hope that they’ll do that once more.
Bang on a Can’s David Lang and Nico Muhly converse within the present program about how 18 Musicians was reworked by the belated publishing of its rating, which lastly allowed teams everywhere in the world to carry out it. When did you first work together with the written notation?
Once I was a grad pupil on the Eastman College within the Nineteen Nineties, I used to be a part of beginning a student-run new music collective there known as Ossia, which gave beginning to Alarm Will Sound, and which nonetheless exists to this present day. All of us actually wished to carry out Music for 18 Musicians, and it so occurred that that was proper when Marc [Mellits] was ending up the primary full rating of the piece. So, we have been a few of the first to see it and play off of it.
My first response was: the downbeats should not the place I assumed they have been! My second response was: wow, all of it appears so sophisticated! I’d discovered the piece from the 2 Steve Reich and Musicians recordings, and it was the unconventional, highly effective simplicity of its constructions that actually made me fall in love with the music. These constructions weren’t simply seen within the rating. Reich had set out — properly! — to create a rating and elements that might make the piece as readable as any extra typical work from the classical music canon, in order that even when you knew nothing concerning the piece and had by no means heard it performed, you possibly can choose up the music and play it appropriately. However that meant making a rating with a ton of element that unintentionally obfuscated a few of its simplicity.
So I used to be instantly curious to discover a method to characterize the piece on paper that expressed that radical simplicity. I spent extra hours than was smart engaged on this again then, however didn’t get all that far in. Then in early 2026, as I started working with the Tactus musicians on memorizing the piece and on creating the staging, it out of the blue hit me that we actually wanted that easy, clear map of Music for 18 that I’d dreamed of all these years earlier. That was the fiftieth Anniversary Map that I created with my husband, Paul Melnikow, and which was featured within the Staged Variations program.
18 Musicians has been known as “probably the most present-tense music ever.” Do you concur? If that’s the case, why?
I’ve by no means heard that phrase earlier than, however I adore it. I found early on that within the midst of wildly diverse emotional experiences, Music for 18 Musicians would connect with what I used to be feeling and make it really feel deeper, higher and extra profound. I could be heartbroken over some annoyed crush, enthusiastic about some new undertaking, impressed by the altering view out an airplane window, or simply having fun with the routine of cleansing my condominium: no matter my current was, this music would heighten it. So, that’s how that quote resonates with me. And that’s why this present works: you possibly can hear the identical music many times and be all the time taken someplace new.
Alarm Will Sound is among the most revered interpreters of Steve’s compositions. What retains drawing you again to 18 Musicians? Is there a Steve piece you’ve but to sort out that piques your curiosity?
It’s precisely that present-tense-ness that brings me again to Music for 18 many times: it’s deeply emotional music that’s obtainable to wide-ranging emotional expertise. Steve was a part of a vanguard that welcomed magnificence and pleasure and emotion again into severe music. The 2 items that may endlessly be dearest to me are Music for 18 Musicians and Tehillim, each of that are intertwined with the origins of Alarm Will Sound (we recorded Tehillim once we have been nonetheless college students). However I like so a lot of his works. I used to be struck and delighted by the power and pleasure in his newest piece, In All Your Methods. I’d love to do this one someday! I’m additionally very connected to his early, rigorously centered course of items like 4 Organs. And I’ve been curious to discover a few of his conceptual works from the Sixties, like My Title Is, which entails recordings of viewers members saying their names; and Sluggish Movement Sound, which is simply the instruction “very steadily decelerate a recorded piece to many instances its authentic size with out altering its pitch or timbre in any respect.” Steve rapidly moved away from these kinds of summary, digital explorations to extra human, acoustic music. However digital music expertise has made each of those ideas infinitely simpler to comprehend, and I feel that each counsel a lot of attention-grabbing new efficiency potentialities in the present day.
Alarm Will Sound simply launched a brand new album, New Acoustica, however are there every other recordings or commissions on the books?
Music for 18 Musicians created a template for a sort of musical work that notably excites me: long-form, summary music that takes listeners on an emotional journey. So, I consider it so much as I’m engaged on new initiatives, and I’m endlessly gratified to get to work with nice composers who share these ambitions. This week, we’re touring Georg Friedrich Haas’s already iconic 1999 work, In Useless. It’s a rare, highly effective expertise of music and lightweight, which I feel owes so much to Music for 18. We’ve additionally bought an evening-length work by one in every of my favourite composers, Cassandra Miller, in growth. Plus, in fact different thrilling stuff on the horizon that I can’t speak about but!
As an artist centered on the intersection of music and theater, opera is a specific ardour for me. So I’m very excited that in April, we’ll be giving the New York premiere of Mark Morris’s staging of David T. Little’s new opera, What Belongs to You, which we launched on album just a few months in the past. I’ve been enthusiastic about David’s work since premiering his early opera, Canine Days, and I feel that is his best opera but.
2026 has been our largest recording 12 months but: New Acoustica comes on the heels of two stay recordings of theatrical works, What Belongs to You and Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Paper Pianos, plus the Elevate launch of music by AWS artists, and an look on composer Davor Vincze’s Ashes album. It’s an thrilling time to be making new music. And I’m curious to consider what the subsequent manufacturing shall be to construct on what I discovered creating Staged Variations on the Armory.
