At 14, he heard Stravinsky and resolved to be a composer. As Reich approaches his 10th decade, the man revered by the likes of David Bowie reflects on a life that changed the soundtrack of modern living
Steve Reich is not yet 90 but the celebrations have already begun, with the world premiere of his new piece for large ensemble, In All Your Ways, at the Edinburgh festival last month and a late-night concert at the BBC Proms. But when I ask this most supremely influential of living composers how he feels about becoming a nonagenarian on 3 October, Reich is coy. “I haven’t quite got there yet,” he says. “I don’t want to dot the i before I even get there. I’ll let you know in due course …”
Born in New York in 1936, Reich has spent the last six decades producing music that has changed the soundtrack of modern life in Europe and North America, and inspired superlatives from a wide array of music critics. The New Yorker has called him “the most original musical thinker of our time”.
