2. Audiences

RK: You started talking about the art world, and what I've always noticed is that going to a concert of yours over the years, or, let's say, to Phil Glass's 30th Anniversary Concert a couple of weeks ago at Avery Fischer-you see a very different audience than you would for, say, the Vienna Philharmonic, or even the San Francisco Symphony playing new music. A very, very different audience. And that audience to me looks like it's more connected with the art world: younger people who undoubtedly go to the Guggenheim and who go to the Whitney.

SR: Is the audience so typical to "pigeon-hole"? There are professors and there are students.

RK: But one thing's for sure: as a group, they're younger.

SR: Yes. with no doubt, and I'm delighted to see this.

RK: What do you think about this?

SR: I think it's great but everyone has to write music that, in a sense, is who they are. If they try to do it otherwise, then in the long or the short run they will fail. I could mention names, but I won't. But there are composers who adopt the "style-of-the-month" (and we know who they are and we could even run down the months and the different styles!) and everyone says "Oh, now he/she is doing this. Tuesday, minimalism..." The bottom line is that it doesn't work! It doesn't work because whatever it is that people have inside of themselves that's really joined to some emotional and intellectual perspective on music -- that's what people want. They want the real you and they know when you're not giving it. How? I don't know how it works, but it works.

Continue

Reich Interview

1.	Starting Out
2.	Audiences
3.	Orchestras and Acoustics
4.	Music as Language
5.	Music and Technology
6.	New Works

Supporting Materials
Biography
List of Works
List of Recordings
Links

Archive Home

Steve Reich (photo: John Halpern)

Archive Home



If you need RealPlayer 5.0,
you can download it free here.