By Jeremy reynoldsSpecial to The Post and Courier

listening to the music of steve reich is like standing still in time.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, who pioneered minimalism in the 1960s and 1970s, achieves the effect through the use of repeti-tive harmonies and elaborate rhythmic structures.

His style will be on full display to-day when members of the spoleto Festival UsA orchestra will perform reich’s semi-nal music for 18 musi-

cians, marking the work’s

40th anniversary this year.recalling the thinking be-

hind the influential piece, reich said that he decided against changing the harmo-nies.

“That meant that the only kind of changes that were going to happen would be changes of rhythm,” he said. “moving one eighth-note ahead, then two eighth-notes ahead, you get different pat-terns generated by the differ-ent canon positions.”

reich explained that this would be like singing “row, row, row your Boat” if some voices sang the melody faster or slower than others.

This harmonic simplicity stands in stark contrast to the complex harmonies and formal structures of reich’s contemporaries, making his music, although experimental,

more accessible and approach-able to a wider audience.

reich said that his musical consumption remained nar-rowly classical and romantic until he turned 14-years-old, when friends began to share records of different genres of music, such as jazz and rock.

“my jaw fell — the world changed,” reich said. “I wanted to do that, that was amazing. In a sense, at the age of 14, my musical life changed and began to focus through jazz and stravinsky and Bach on the kind of music that I am still preoccupied with. For people who have a wider scope, and enjoy baroque mu-sic and enjoy jazz, enjoy rock ’n’ roll or any kind of contem-porary stuff, they certainly respond to my music.”

The straightforwardness of reich’s harmonies help to at-tract a broader listenership, said yiorgos Vassilandonakis, assistant professor of compo-sition and music theory at the College of Charleston.

“The harmonies are simpler, and the gestures are simpler,” he said. “With steve reich, things are stretched out in time quite extensively, and that helps the music to sink in a bit more.”

This allows reich to alter his listeners’ sense of time.

“In order to perceive form, you have to use musical memory,” Vassilandonakis said. “you have to compare what you’re listening to right now with things that hap-pened even five seconds ago. or a minute ago. And that’s how we understand melody or rhythm in form, certainly. But reich — what he’s do-ing is stretching all of those elements to the limit. It’s so

long that you don’t really care about your musical memories any more, you only care about the musical present.”

rather than employ long, drawn-out melodies, reich uses short melodic fragments that repeat.

The result of all of this repe-tition is that listeners focus on the moment rather than what comes before or after.

It’s meditative, trance-like, said Vassilandonakis, who uses reich’s work in his music appreciation courses.

Hypnotic qualities not-withstanding, minimalism provided a breath of fresh air from the hyper-academic avant-gardism of many of reich’s contemporaries, which is not to say that reich wasn’t breaking new ground. Using a simple harmonic palette allowed reich to experiment with other musical elements, such as rhythm and timbre.

music for 18 musicians was his first work for a large a en-semble, which gave him ample room to try out new combina-tions of instrumental sounds and develop more intricate rhythmic structures.

“I am who I am, and I have been fortunate enough to be able to do what I really believe in musically, write what I hear,” he said. “my basic attitude is, if I love it, hopefully you will too.”

18 musicians play Reich’s masterpiece of minimalism

By Jeremy reynoldsSpecial to The Post and Courier

Helmut lachenmann’s com-positions probably aren’t for everyone. The composer even likened a concert of his music to thrill seeking.

“In switzerland, people pay 500 euros just to make bungee jumping,” lachenmann said. “They want to have this feeling of pushing the limit. But in the concert hall, they are sitting in the royal bathtub! so I must put a little bit of cold water in the bathtub, into the concert hall.”

lachenmann, whose music will be featured in three of the spoleto Festival’s upcoming music in Time concerts, uses non-traditional sounds and forms in his work. His “cold water” involves performers coaxing experimental noises from their instruments, such as breathing through a tuba without playing a note or tak-ing a clarinet apart and tapping the ends percussively. There is rarely a discernable harmonic or rhythmic structure.

This has earned his music a reputation for being difficult to understand and appreciate, but lachenmann has a pur-pose behind his unorthodox technique.

“When you hear me, you try to understand what I am say-ing,” he said. “But you do not listen to my voice.”

His said his aim is to draw at-tention to the sound of his mu-sic rather than its meaning.

“If I would speak like this,” he said in a shrill falsetto, “or like this,” he said in a guttural bass, “then you would take (notice of) my voice. It’s another sort of listening altogether.”

during the first music in

Time concert, lachenmann will talk about his musical philosophies and composi-tional process in conversation with John Kennedy, director and host of the music in Time series. Kennedy said that fea-turing lachenmann’s chamber music on the series was a way

to introduce spoleto au-diences to the compos-er’s musical vocabulary prior to per-formances of his opera “The little match Girl,” which will

receive its U.s. premiere at the festival on may 29. several of the more experienced lachen-mann interpreters performing in “The little match Girl” will appear on the music in Time programs.

In the programs, lachen-mann’s wife, pianist yukiko sugawara, will perform the song cycle “Got lost” with soprano yuko Kakuta. Pianist renate rohlfing will play “ein Kinderspiel” (“Child’s Play”) for solo piano. And pianist stephen drury, a longtime fan and supporter of lachen-mann’s music, will perform “serynade,” another work for solo piano.

drury, who has performed “serynade” many times, said he is still finding his way around the piece, which involves smashing the keys down with both forearms and, at times, raising and lowering the damp-er pedal without playing the keys. He compared the vision-ary qualities in lachenmann’s music to Beethoven’s late com-

positional period.“Helmut’s music doesn’t

want to give us what we al-ready have, what we already feel good about,” drury said. “He wants to give us an ex-perience we can’t imagine having. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”

lachenmann said that he searches for beauty in his quest to develop new musical lan-guage. But though he speaks of language, lachenmann doesn’t try to communicate ideas through his work, insist-ing that beauty is an aural phenomenon that should be appreciated for its authenticity.

“(music) is the same thing as a sunrise,” he said. “It doesn’t say (anything). It’s there, and you enjoy it.”

regardless of musical syn-tax, lachenmann said that if a work is composed well, the music will stand apart from its creator and speak for itself.

“I say always, a composer has nothing to say,” he said. “He does not communicate any philosophical idea whatever. He has to create something, and the thing he creates shall say so much more than the composer even knows.”

Jeremy Reynolds is a Goldring graduate student at Syracuse University.

Composer Lachenmann’s non-philosophy of music

If you go

Lachenmann

WHAT: Music in Time: LachenmannWHEN: 5 p.m. Friday, 5 p.m. Saturday, 5 p.m. TuesdayWHERE: Simons Recital Hall, 54 St. Philip St.COST: Tickets start at $27MORE INFO: www.spoleto usa.org; 843-579-3100

If you go

Reich

JoHn AbboTT

By lIndsey o’lAUGHlInSpecial to The Post and Courier

When Cécile mclorin sal-vant took the stage at the semifinals of the 2010

Thelonious monk International Jazz Vocals Competition, Thomas Carter said he was awe-struck.

“The minute she opened her mouth, there was a hush over the entire audi-ence,” Carter said. “Her performance at that competition (was) one of the greatest of all time.”

Carter is the president of the Theloni-ous monk Institute of Jazz, a position he’s held since 1986 when he co-founded the organization. He’s seen dozens of musicians on the stage at those competi-tions, and he said salvant’s performance will go down in history.

salvant made her spoleto Festi-val debut in 2012 in the College of Charleston Cistern yard, where she will return this year to perform tonight. In the years since her first appearance here, the internationally acclaimed jazz vocalist has performed around the world with the Aaron diehl Trio. she recorded two full-length albums, and this year she won a Grammy award in the Best Vocal Jazz Album category for her 2015 re-lease, “For one To love.”

needless to say, she’s had a good few years.

“she’s a role model for all genera-tions and very much her own genera-tion,” Carter said. “If you close your eyes and just listen, you can’t imagine that here is someone in their 20s rep-resenting all of this music over many, many decades.”

salvant was born in miami in 1989 and began studying music at age 5, eventually attending the University of miami. In 2007, she moved to Aix-en-Provence, France, to attend the darius milhaud Conservatory for classical and baroque voice. It was there that she met jazz instructor and multireed-ist Jean-Francois Bonnel and made her foray into jazz performance.

Washington Performing Arts, in Washington, d.C., has booked salvant

for the last three years, and she will return again this fall. samantha Pol-lack, director of programming, said it’s unusual for WPA to have the same performer each year, but salvant is a fan favorite.

“A lot of times you’ll go to a perfor-mance and you’ll feel like there’s a wall between the artist and the audience,” Pollack said. “Cécile has this way of communicating with the audience (in which) she’s still very much performing on stage, but she’s letting them in on a secret.”

Pollack also praised salvant’s gen-erosity. each year, the district of Co-lumbia College Access Program brings high school students to performances in the area. Pollack said they always see salvant, and before the concert, she meets with the students to talk about her experiences, answer questions and give them a primer of what to expect.

“not a lot of people, especially singers, will do something like that,” Pollack said.

When she listens to salvant sing, Pollack hears inflections of the great jazz vocalists of the last century, in-cluding sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and ella Fitzgerald, but she said sal-vant’s voice is unique.

rob Gibson, executive and artistic director of the savannah music Festi-val, agrees.

“she’s really, I think, incapable of be-ing anybody but herself,” he said.

salvant is a collector and interpreter of songs, including a number of tunes from the 1920s and 30s. Gibson’s favor-ite track from her new album is a rein-terpretation of Blanche Calloway’s 1931 song, “Growlin’ dan.” He spoke highly of salvant’s original compositions and her collaboration with Aaron diehl.

Gibson also characterized salvant as the antithesis of a diva.

“she just lives and breathes music, and you feel that when you hang out with Cécile,” he said. “you can go sit down at a restaurant and have coffee with her. she’s remarkably sophisti-cated but totally unpretentious.”

At 26, salvant has captivated the jazz world.

Acclaimed vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant returns to Spoleto Festival

Captivating audiences

WHAT: Cecile McLorin Salvant

WHEN: 9 p.m. FridayWHERE: Cistern Yard, 66 George St.

COST: Tickets start at $30

MORE INFO: www.spoleto usa.org; 843-579-3100

WHAT: Music for 18 MusiciansWHEN: 8 p.m. FridayWHERE: Memminger Auditorium, 56 beaufain St.COST: Tickets start at $22.50MORE INFO: www.spoleto usa.org; 843-579-3100

If you go

SpoletoA8: Friday, June 3, 2016 the post and Courier