A birthday mixtape for Steve Reich

Verity Sharp presents a carefully-curated musical offering from one artist to another as bassoonist and conductor Rebekah Heller gifts her friend and fellow New Yorker Steve Reich a mixtape to celebrate his 90th Birthday.

Rebekah and Steve first sparked their collaborative work and friendship in 2018 after realising they were neighbours. As a bassoonist, Heller became deeply interested in finding ways to perform the iconic minimalist composer's compositions on her own instrument, and on her recent album, Righteous Rage, Heller worked with Reich to arrange his 2003 composition “Cello Counterpoint” for multitracked bassoons. It's a work that Reich himself described as “one of the most difficult pieces I have ever written, calling for extremely tight, fast moving rhythmic relationships not commonly found in the cello literature." Heller co-produced her own ambitious reconfiguration (titled "Grand Street Counterpoint") with the composer in the spring of 2024. For her exclusive Late Junction mixtape, she weaves together a sequence of music for her friend inspired by the idea of 'musical explorers', those artists who - like Steve - have aimed to experiment and push their sound forwards.

Elsewhere in the show: glassy sounds from a New Zealand electro-acoustic pioneer working in the 1960s, recommended courtesy of a listener via the Late Junction inbox.

Produced by Cat Gough
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

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