"The four Counterpoint works of Steve Reich were composed over a period of twenty-one years, from 1982's Vermont Counterpoint to 2003's Cello Counterpoint. Each one was written for a different instrument: Vermont Counterpoint for flute, New York Counterpoint for clarinet, Electric Counterpoint for electric guitar, and Cello Counterpoint, unsurprisingly, for cello."
"All were composed for a live performer alongside an audio tape of pre-recorded parts on the same instrument, building up a complex of little motifs within which one can. Put another way, it is music composed twenty years before the looper pedal. In Electric Counterpoint, for instance, the guitarist plays along with up to a dozen other pre-recorded guitar parts."
"Hopscotch is a contemporary arts space in the Central Eastside of Portland that opened in 2023. It is of a kind with other multimedia arts spaces that have been popping up in recent decades such as Meow Wolf. Hopscotch, like Meow Wolf, creates a fantastical atmosphere of interactive art pieces."
Third Angle New Music performed all four of Steve Reich's Counterpoint compositions at Hopscotch on January 29, celebrating the composer's ninetieth birthday. The works—Vermont Counterpoint, New York Counterpoint, Cello Counterpoint, and Electric Counterpoint—were composed between 1982 and 2003, each written for a different instrument paired with pre-recorded audio tracks of the same instrument. This compositional approach creates layered musical textures through multiple motifs, predating modern looper pedal technology by two decades. Musicians Sarah Tiedemann, Will Pyle, Valdine Mishkin, and guest Daniel Reyes Llinás performed the respective pieces. Hopscotch, a contemporary arts space opened in 2023 in Portland's Central Eastside, provided an immersive multimedia environment for the performance, featuring interactive art installations and retrowave aesthetic design.
#steve-reich #contemporary-classical-music #counterpoint-compositions #third-angle-new-music #hopscotch-arts-space
Read at Oregon ArtsWatch * Arts & Culture News
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