“New York to Chicago… to Chicago… New York to Chicago… to Chicago.”

The first time I heard Different Trains, I knew that Steve Reich was my kind of composer. I had the same reaction when I heard Bach for the first time. This was perceptible process, music unfolding before the ears in a brilliant stream of continual invention. Steve has never had a problem with classical music being entertaining. According to him, “If being entertaining is good enough for Mozart, it’s good enough for me.”

A few years later, I had the honor of working with Steve on a performance of his minimalist masterpiece, Music for 18 Musicians, bringing him to Portland for a program that also included Proverb (“How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life”) and Different Trains. We were all a bit braced for his visit, wanting to impress him with this ambitious program, and show him that musicians in Portland were up to the formidable challenge his music presented.

When Steve arrived, he asked me, “Are the musicians having fun? Do they ‘get’ my music?” While I assured him that we did, that small tension didn’t evaporate until we started our first run-through of Music for 18, and the smiles emerged. After our rehearsal of Different Trains, I remember my colleagues holding our breath a bit when he paused, then told us that it was the greatest performance of the piece he’d ever heard. Life-changing shit, for sure.

Steve’s long association with the Kronos Quartet has produced other masterpieces for string quartet, including WTC 9/11 and Triple Quartet, the featured piece on our livestreamed concert this week. Triple Quartet has everything we love about Steve’s music: rhythmic invention, tension and release of harmonies, constant unfolding of ideas, all coming together to create music that is perpetually interesting.

Triple Quartet is exactly what it says it is… three quartets playing simultaneously, music for 12 musicians. Typically it is performed with one live quartet and recorded soundtrack, but since we in the Pyxis Quartet are lunatics about big challenges, we’ve decided to play all the parts ourselves; two recorded Pyxis Quartets and one live Pyxis Quartet. Pray for us.

As an amuse-bouche for this program, we’ll start with the beautiful Andante from Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings, once again taking on the challenge of playing all eight parts ourselves. Mendelssohn was only 16 years old when he wrote his masterpiece, an incredible accomplishment!

As always, we are indebted to Danny Rosenberg for designing the technology that allows us to collaborate for these performances. In this case, Marilyn, Charles, and myself will be in Portland, and Emily will be in Albuquerque. It has been a tremendous gift to us to be able to make music together during these surreal times. Thank you, Danny!

See you Friday!

Ron Blessinger
Executive Director, 45^th Parallel Universe