This season, Colin Currie Group makes a return to Southbank Centre to perform Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, before travelling to Rotterdam for two further performances.

Last season Colin Currie Group gave performances of Music for 18 Musicians at Saffron Hall and Glasgow’s ‘Minimal’ festival in which “the ensemble drew the listener in completely to Reich’s exquisitely ethereal soundscape” Herald Scotland, May 2015.

Music for 18 Musicians (1974 – 6) was a hit for Steve Reich when it was released in 1978 on the ECM label, selling 100,000 records in its first year. Scored for a chamber ensemble of percussion, pianos, strings, woodwinds and voices, Music for 18 is developed on a sequence of 11 chords where “one pattern morphs into another, addicted to the groove and pulse of the music” (Tom Service, Guardian).

The performance in May 2016 will be the Group’s second performance of Music for 18 Musician’s at the Southbank Centre, having previously performed to a sold out Royal Festival Hall in 2013,  acclaimed by the press as “technically impeccable and musically overwhelming” (Guardian) and “simultaneously static and bursting with event: a joyful conundrum” (Independent).

In April 2015, Colin Currie Group gave the Netherlands premiere of Reich’s Quartet (written specifically for the group) at De Doelen Rotterdam as part of Colin Currie’s season as artist in residence in the Red Sofa Series. Colin Currie Group returns to Rotterdam on 26^th May 2016 to perform Music for 18 Musicians twice in one night in the intimate surrounds of Laurenskerk, Rotterdam, presented by De Doelen.