REICH/RICHTER
A cool and elegant multimedia piece
Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall, London
Minimalist master Steve Reich returns to his New York arts scene roots in this bright and rhythmically agile piece, written and performed alongside painter Gerhard Richter’s film Moving Picture. The film starts with a two-pixel pulsating, colour-shifting line, which becomes four pixels, then sixteen, then 32 and so on. The music starts with a two-note oscillation that expands equally but then becomes liberated from the structure of the forms on film, allowing notes to escape and create their own destiny in this cool and elegant piece. Music by two other masters of the New York scene complement Reich’s music, while the London Sinfonietta, with Sound Intermedia, re-create Nunu, its commission from the late and sadly missed Mira Calix.
Julia Wolfe Tell me everything
Julius Eastman Joy Boy
Mira Calix Nunu
Anna Clyne Fractured Time (world premiere)
Steve Reich Reich / Richter
Manoj Kamps conductor
Sound Intermedia
London Sinfonietta
About the film
Reich Richter / Moving Picture (946-3) plumbs the depths of a shared language between painting and music, exploring how each medium might affect our sensory experience of the other. The collaboration between Steve Reich, Gerhard Richter and Corinna Belz each expanding on a shared interest in the relationship between art and music.
In 2018 Gerhard Richter and Corinna Belz started to developed an abstract 35 mins film out of the algorithmic processing of Richter’s abstract painting 946-3.
The Reich Richter partnership, based on the notion of seriality, expands on both Richter's formula for his “Patterns” series, which divides, mirrors, and repeats a single painting, and on Reich’s systematic compositions from the 1960s and ’70s.
The world premiere of Reich’s new composition Reich Richter was performed in April 2019 at The Shed in New York by the Ensemble Signal alongside with the film Moving Picture (946-3).
Pairing Richter paintings with music is a concept first curated by Alex Poots and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Images and text (c) Gerhard Richter and Corinna Belz
Curious? Under 30s Scheme
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Sign upThis event is produced by the London Sinfonietta and supported by the Southbank Centre
The work of the London Sinfonietta is supported by Arts Council England and the John Ellerman Foundation, and with the friendly support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
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