“Ensemble Signal have given many of the best performances of my music I have ever heard.” —Steve Reich
Celebrate two masters of contemporary art in an inspired evening of sound and vision. The 18-piece Ensemble Signal, conducted by Brad Lubman, performs an enveloping evening of music by iconic American composer Steve Reich. First presented in 2019 at the Shed in New York City, Reich Richter explores the connections between Reich’s music and Gerhard Richter’s sumptuous visual art in a film by Corinna Belz. The program also includes Steve Reich’s Runner (2016) for large ensemble.
Copresented with the Schubert Club Mix Series.
Ensemble Signal Plays Steve Reich: Reich Richter Runner
Thursday, March 23, 2023, 7 pm, 9:30 pm
$38 ($30.50 Walker members)
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ensemble Signal is a NY-based ensemble dedicated to offering the broadest possible audience access to a diverse range of contemporary works through performance, commissioning, recording, and education. Since its debut in 2008, Signal has performed over 350 concerts, premiered numerous works, and coproduced ten recordings. Signal was founded by Co-Artistic/Executive Director Lauren Radnofsky and Co-Artistic Director/Conductor Brad Lubman. Described by the New York Times as “one of the most vital groups of its kind” and “a new-music ensemble that by this point practically guarantees quality performances,” Signal regularly performs with Lubman and features a supergroup of independent artists from the modern music scene. Lubman, one of the foremost conductors of modern music and a leading figure in the field for over two decades, is a frequent guest with the world’s most distinguished orchestras and new music ensembles.
Steve Reich has been called “the most original musical thinker of our time” (the New Yorker) and “among the great composers of the century” (the New York Times). Starting in the 1960s, his pieces It’s Gonna Rain, Drumming, Music for 18 Musicians, Tehillim, Different Trains, and many others helped shift the aesthetic center of musical composition worldwide away from extreme complexity and towards rethinking pulsation and tonal attraction in new ways. He continues to influence younger generations of composers and mainstream musicians and artists all over the world.
Double Sextet won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 and Different Trains, Music for 18 Musicians, and an album of his percussion works have all earned Grammy Awards. One of the most frequently choreographed composers, several noted choreographers have created dances to his music, including Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Jirí Kylián, Jerome Robbins, Justin Peck, Wayne McGregor, Benjamin Millepied, and Christopher Wheeldon. Reich’s documentary video opera works—The Cave and Three Tales, done in collaboration with video artist Beryl Korot—opened new directions for music theater and have been performed on four continents.
“There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them,” the Guardian.
Gerhard Richter (1932) is a German painter who originally trained in a realist style and later developed an appreciation for the more progressive work of his American and European contemporaries. Richter increasingly employed his own painting as a means for exploring how images that appear to capture “truth” often prove, on extended viewing, far less objective, or unsure in meaning, than originally assumed. The other common themes in his work are the elements of chance, and the play between realism and abstraction. Working alongside but never fully embracing a quick succession of late-20th-century art movements, such as Abstract Expressionism, American/British Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptualism, Richter has absorbed many of their ideas while remaining skeptical of all grand artistic and philosophical credos.
Corinna Belz (1955) is a German filmmaker who studied philosophy, history of art, and media sciences in Cologne and Berlin. She has written and directed numerous film productions. Her first film about Gerhard Richter’s work, The Cologne Cathedral Window (2007), was awarded the World Media Gold Award – Art Documentaries. Her feature-length cinema documentary Gerhard Richter Painting (2011) won much critical acclaim and was awarded the German Film Prize in Gold (highest honors in German cinema). The film ran nine weeks at the Film Forum in New York and was shown in numerous American cities. It ran successfully in France, Italy, Netherlands, Great Britain, Poland, and other European countries
ABOUT THE WALKER ART CENTER
Known for presenting today’s most compelling artists from close to home and around the world, the Walker Art Center features a broad array of contemporary visual arts, music, dance, theater, and moving image works. Ranging from concerts and films to exhibitions and workshops, Walker programs bring us together to examine the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities. The adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States, holds at its center the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen as well as some 60 sculptures on the 19-acre Walker campus. Visit walkerart.org for more information on upcoming events and programs.
ABOUT SCHUBERT CLUB
Founded 140 years ago, Schubert Club is one of the nation’s most vibrant music organizations, enriching Minnesota with dynamic concerts, music education programs, and museum exhibits. Schubert Club reaches approximately 2,000 youth annually through varied activities such as family concerts, teacher and student workshops, free music lessons in neighborhood locations, and scholarships that allow young students to pursue their music studies more intensively. In addition, the Schubert Club Music Museum, located in downtown Saint Paul’s historic Landmark Center, holds a world-class collection of historic keyboards, original letters and manuscripts of famous composers, and musical instruments from around the world. Schubert Club maintains a commitment to affordable ticket prices for all concert presentations, as well as cost-free education programs and museum entrance, thanks to endowment gifts and annual donations. For more information visit schubert.org.