Steve Reich

Composer Steve Reich didn't create the minimalist movement, but he's taken it to virtually every corner of the sonic universe and, left his indelible stamp on modern music in the process. It's nearly impossible to imagine just how revolutionary his analog tape sampling was in 1965 . . . until you listen to "It's Gonna Rain, Part I" nearly half-a-century later and discover how much today's hip-hop owes to it. As Reich developed as a composer, his sense of rhythm and reiteration remained, but melodic elements also began to take hold, as guitarist Pat Metheny proves in the mechanical-meets-human interplay of "Electric Counterpoint: II. Slow." And Reich won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for music with his "Double Sextet" (performed here by Eighth Blackbird), which the prize committee said was "consistently intriguing to the ear."

In Next Steps, we'll hear Reich perform on the oldest music-making apparatus of all: the human voice.

For all that Reich has experimented with tapes and electronics, some of his most magnificent and meaningful work has come from that most ancient of instruments, the human voice. In "The Cave: East Jerusalem - Hebron: Act 2," Sheikh Dahoud Atalah chants the Koran in Arabic, unaccompanied by anything other than his open-throated sonics. With "Tehillim: III. Psalm 18:26-27, 'Imchahsid, titchahsahd,'" Reich not only takes his text from the Torah, but mixes the almost angelic vocals with a very spare underlying score for a hauntingly spiritual atmosphere. And the percussive ostinato in "The Desert Music: II. Second Movement (Moderate)" creates an irresistible tension between the work's voices and its instruments. If Copland's "Billy the Kid" was the settlers' version of the Old West as seen through the eyes of classical music, "Desert Music" is the Native Americans'.

In Deep Cuts, we'll hear Reich remixed.

Pretty much anybody with a mixing board and an open pair of ears has had a go at Reich, and that's no big surprise, since his music lends itself so well to electro-beats and sample play. In "2x5: III. Fast (Vakula Version)," he steps out of the symphony hall and into an Ibiza chillout lounge, with a dance-friendly reworking that's as airy as the afternoon breeze off the Mediterranean. In the hands of DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, "City Life (Open Circuit)" gets a Beat Generation-style jazz makeover that's only a couple of finger snaps and a beret away from joining Kerouac on the road. And Four Tet have taken Reich's "Drumming (Four Tet Remix)" and glossed it with the twinkle of a music box jingle-jangling in the back of a low rider's Chevy Impala . . . that one with the window-shattering bass drivers.

Giants still stride among us. After almost half-a-century of sharing his ideas with the public, minimalist deity Steve Reich is still challenging us to listen to music we've never heard before, in a way we've never heard it before. Not only was he one of the pioneers of tape manipulation — a technique that would be adopted by pop artists from the Age of Aquarius to the hip-hop era — but he also reset the goalposts of modern classical music, moving away from the 12-tone experiments of his peers to something much more melodic. For someone deeply entrenched in the often-cold world of electronics, he creates works that generally come across as profoundly human in scale and feeling. Like most classical composers, he requires some commitment on the part of his listeners, but after you spend a little time in the company of his compositions, you'll see why artists from Brian Eno to Pat Metheny cite him as one of contemporary music's most consequential voices.