STEVE REICH PROJECT

The Steve Reich Project is inspired from three works by Steve Reich, Pendulum Music | Different Trains | WTC 9/11 and is interpreted by a new generation of artists.

The MP4 Quartet and choreographer/director Isabella Soupart link up Different Trains with WTC 9/11, two works whose composition relies on the same process: repetitive music, cycles, sound tracks and testimonies. Both bring together individual reflections and historical dramas. Composed by Steve Reich in 1988 for string quartet and magnetic tape, Different Trains combines in resonance intimate dimensions with dark moments in History. Referring to his frequent train travels between New York and Los Angeles, Reich says : “If I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains”. With this in mind he wanted to produce a piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation. Audio-tapes are composed using Steve Reich’s own governess’s voice, the voice of a baggage porter on the New-York/Los Angeles route and voices from survivors of the Shoah. The same technique is used 20 years later in WTC 9/11, a piece written to commemorate the first main tragedy of the 21st Century, the September 11 attacks.
On stage, the quartet engages in a dialogue with a dancer, moving together or separately, with text, music and video as a backdrop. Together, they express sound and movement in a constantly shifting space. By extricating ourselves from language and a linear train of thought, the Steve Reich Project invites us to embrace the volatile nature nested in our subjective consciousness, deals with questions of humanity such as the meaning of life and the constancy of History repeating itself.