Stephen Michael Reich, who owns a house in Pound Ridge, turns 77 on Thursday, Oct. 3.
Reich, born in 1936, is an American composer who, along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Philip Glass, pioneered minimal music in the mid to late 1960s.
His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns (for example, his early compositions It's Gonna Rain and Come Out), and the use of simple, audible processes to explore musical concepts (for instance, Pendulum Music and Four Organs).
Reich was named the 2007 recipient of the Polar Music Prize, together with jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins on Jan. 25, 2007. Reich was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Double Sextet.
Reich has the world premiere of a piece, WTC 9/11, written for String Quartet and Tape, a similar instrumentation to that of Different Trains. It was premiered in March 2011 by the Kronos Quartet, at Duke University, North Carolina, USA.
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