Steve Reich is an American composer born in New York City in 1936 and a foundational figure of minimalist music alongside Philip Glass and Terry Riley. Music for 18 Musicians (1976) is the landmark — pulsing, hypnotic, endlessly influential — and the Grammy-winning Different Trains (1988) shows the emotional depth of his technique. Shop Steve Reich vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Stephen Michael Reich was born in New York City on October 3, 1936. He launched his compositional career in the mid-1960s with his foundational tape music experiments It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) - phase-shifting techniques developed at San Francisco Tape Music Center established the foundational minimalist music technique that has been influential on contemporary composition. He is widely cited as one of the most important contemporary classical composers in popular music history alongside Philip Glass, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, John Adams, and other minimalist music pioneers. His 1976 composition Music for 18 Musicians is widely cited as one of the most important contemporary classical compositions of the 20th century. His 1988 composition Different Trains - for the Kronos Quartet, integrating recorded speech samples of his Jewish childhood and Holocaust survivor accounts - won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 1990. His 2007 composition Double Sextet won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has won three Grammy Awards. His foundational influence on contemporary classical music, minimalist music, ambient music, electronic music, and broader contemporary popular music is widely cited - influence on Brian Eno, John Adams, Sufjan Stevens, the Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows production approaches, electronic music, and many others.
Steve Reich's sound is foundational to minimalist music as a recognized genre - combining minimalist music, contemporary classical, modern classical, phase music, electronic music, tape music, and post-minimalism with his distinctive compositional approaches (use of phasing, repetition, gradual rhythmic modulation, and integration of recorded speech samples), and commitment to accessible performance practices.
Original Columbia Records, ECM Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch Records, and Cantaloupe Music pressings of the Steve Reich catalog are foundational items in contemporary classical collecting, with collector premiums on rare pressings.
Listeners new to Steve Reich typically start with Music for 18 Musicians (1976/1978) or Different Trains (1988).
