Conversations

August 1, 2021

Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays is the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by Harlem Renaissance great Hurston, coming at a time when she is in the news again with books like the New York Times best-selling Barracoon (100,000-copy first printing). From Nayeri, an arts and culture writer for the New York Times, Takedown argues that while censorship once happened top-down (think kings and popes), it is now sometimes done bottom-up by activists challenging artists, critics, and museums. Author of the two-volume biography of Alexander Calder, critic Perl argues in Authority and Freedom that art's value lies in its independence from any ideology; "art's relevance has everything to do with what many regard as its irrelevance." Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Reich (love Drumming and Double Sextet!) holds Conversations about his life and music. Focusing on linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, and wool, Pratt Institute professor Thanhauser's Worn tells us everything we would want to know about clothes, what they are made of, and how they have shaped--and been shaped by--human history.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2021
Artists in various disciplines share their thoughts on and with one of the most celebrated contemporary composers. In this collection of transcripts from chats, most of them conducted via Zoom in 2020 and 2021, figures including sculptor Richard Serra, Kronos Quartet founder David Harrington, and composer Julia Wolfe share insights into minimalist composer Reich's works, including It's Gonna Rain, Electric Counterpoint, and Double Sextet, the last of which garnered Reich the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music. While most conversations focus primarily on Reich (b. 1936), the book is strongest when there's a genuine dialogue between composers, as when Reich and Stephen Sondheim discuss similarities in their work during a 2015 moderated chat ("we share a fondness for the same harmonic structures," Sondheim says) or when Nico Muhly describes the ways in which Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and a motet by William Byrd influenced his No Uncertain Terms. Conversations in which little is learned of the other participant's output lack the depth of other exchanges. Even there, however, the shoptalk is a thrill to read. Reich fans will develop a greater appreciation of his music, with sections on his mastery of the use of tape loops, his innovations in phase music, the rehearsals for Drumming, and the use of strings in parallel with recorded voices in Different Trains. Those new to Reich will discover an eclectic composer who has drawn from sources as disparate as electronic devices made at Bell Labs in the 1960s and the music of 12th-century French composer P�rotin to create the hypnotic Four Organs. Conversations with conductors Michael Tilson Thomas and David Robertson are particularly rich thanks to their enthusiasm and expansiveness and the depth of technical detail--especially when Robertson speaks about conducting Reich's Tehillim, The Desert Music, and other pieces and Thomas discusses the near-riot Reich's Four Organscaused at Carnegie Hall in 1973. A rewarding journey through the career of one of the pioneers of minimalist music.

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January 17, 2022
Avant-garde composer Reich (Writings on Music, 1965–2000) talks shop with friends and colleagues in these intimate discussions. In meandering conversations with 19 peers—among them rocker composers Brian Eno and Jonny Greenwood, Broadway tunesmith Stephen Sondheim, and choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker—he explores his musical innovations in such compositions as It’s Gonna Rain, Drumming, and Music for 18 Musicians, all of which feature long, repetitive, rhythmic arrangements and deconstructions of spoken words and instrumental motifs, with tempos that go subtly off kilter. Topics touched on include the influence of Reich’s teachers and collaborators; Manhattan’s minimalist music scene in the 1960s and 1970s; the intricacy and difficulty of rehearsal sessions; and unpredictable public reactions (one Carnegie Hall audience for Four Organs became so “unruly” that the performers couldn’t hear each other). Aimed at professional musicians, the book’s talk of music theory and arcana can be heavy going (“The whole piece keeps moving in a cycle of four different key signatures, always moving up a minor third. Notice I don’t say D to F to A-flat to B, because it may be major, or minor or modal or chromatically altered”). Still, the intriguing lore and insights are sure to quench the thirst of hardcore fans. Agent: Jim Kendrick, Alter Kendrick & Baron.

February 15, 2022
Iconoclastic American composer Steve Reich is singular in his own right, and when he is in conversation with other equally iconoclastic composers, conductors, sculptors, musicians, percussionists, and video artists, sparks not only fly, they sparkle. He speaks with Brian Eno, Richard Serra, Michael Tilson Thomas, Stephen Sondheim, Jonny Greenwood, and Julia Wolfe. With the exception of Sondheim's, which was recorded in 2015, almost all of the other chats were conducted via Zoom in 2020 and early 2021. As the title indicates, these are true exchanges as Reich and his colleagues conduct lovely give-and-takes during which they share stories, creative approaches, and viewpoints. Sondheim, for example, confesses that Radiohead was one of the few rock bands he found interesting because of the group's use of complex harmonies. Reich says that he heard in his head the French composer Olivier Messiaen when listening to Jonny Greenwood's score for the 2007 film There Will Be Blood. Wolfe, co-artistic director of the collective Bang on a Can, recalls hearing Reich's Music for 18 Musicians in Ann Arbor and being "stunned." Reich's Conversations is the best kind of eavesdropping.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2022

It's always a delight to read interviews conducted by those thoroughly familiar with their subject, and this collection is no exception, with its conversations between composer Reich (known for his contributions to minimalist music) and his many collaborators, performance partners, and friends over six decades of music. Most interesting is when Reich reflects on his philosophy, which is to make the creative process audible in his music; the discussion of many of his best-known pieces (such as Come Out, Music for 18 Musicians, and Different Trains) often reaches granular levels of detail that will send fans back to recordings with a greater sense of discernment. The book assumes that readers will be familiar with the individuals featured (though a group of short bios at the end is helpful), but if they're already fans of Reich, it's entirely possible that they'll know his scene. The volume is less useful as an introduction to Reich--but then, it's not intended to be. The playlist of Reich's music is an excellent accompaniment to the reading. VERDICT An enjoyable series of insights into an artist's creative process. For Reich fans and scholars of American musical composition.--Genevieve Williams

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.