By Dexter "Box-Office" Reel
Steve Reich turns 90 on October 3, but the party started early. Last month, the Edinburgh festival gave the world premiere of his new large-ensemble piece, In All Your Ways, followed by a late-night set at the BBC Proms — a rare pair of honors for a composer still producing new work in his tenth decade.
Asked by The Guardian how it feels to be closing in on 90, Reich stayed characteristically dry: "I haven't quite got there yet. 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 six decades building a body of work — built on repetition, phasing and pulse — that quietly rewired how Western music thinks about rhythm and time. The influence runs wide: David Bowie counted himself an admirer, and The New Yorker has called Reich "the most original musical thinker of our time," a superlative The Guardian cites as evidence of just how far his reach extends beyond the classical world into rock, electronic and film music.
The Guardian interview finds Reich unsentimental about his own legacy, more interested in the work in front of him than in retrospectives. At 14, hearing Stravinsky was enough to convince him to become a composer; nearly 76 years later, he's still writing pieces that premiere at major festivals, not just being celebrated for the ones he wrote decades ago.
Why it matters: Composers who remain creatively active — not just celebrated — into their 90s are vanishingly rare. Reich's continued output, and the institutional attention still paid to it, is a reminder that minimalism's most influential architect isn't finished building.
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.
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