Music For 18 Musicians (Steve Reich)Genre: ClassicalDescription: A re-interpretation so often comes from an impulse even if subliminal of one-upmanship - let me do better wait 'til you hear it my way. Sometimes though and it happens too rarely the cover is an act of devotion in which a musician's humility produces something more beautiful than bravura could. When Erik Hall undertook his painstaking reconstruction of Steve Reich's 1976 masterpiece of minimalism Music for 18 Musicians it was as much an exercise in modesty as ambition. With it's repetitions and complex constructions the piece makes great demands on stamina and concentration and Reich himself advised that these challenges meant it should probably be performed with more than eighteen musicians. Hall however recorded every part himself in his small home studio playing instruments he had on hand in live single takes. Here then is the ambition. But here too is the modesty: by doing one section a day one instrument at a time he made his way through this monumental piece building a faithful and loving re-creation one sonic brick at a time. Xylophone becomes muted piano violin becomes electric guitar and so it is that music for eighteen becomes music for one. I didn't want the differences to be distracting or gimmicky says Hall who's loved the piece for as long as he can remember. I wanted it to be true to the timbre and spirit of the original recording and he thought a great deal about how I would shape the tone of each instrument to come across with the same impact that we know the piece to have. His methodology as with Reich's piece itself is workmanlike and it's from this humble and steadfast undertaking that something honest and radiant emerges.
