Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 6, 2007|Volume 35, Number 24

Chubb Fellowship hosts visit by
'America's greatest living composer'

Renowned composer Steve Reich will visit Yale as a Chubb Fellow on Wednesday, April 11.

Reich will answer questions from the audience following a performance of some of his music at 4:30 p.m. in Trinity Lutheran Church, 292 Orange St. The event is free and open to the public.

Reich has been called "America's greatest living composer" by The Village Voice, "the most original musical thinker of our time" by The New Yorker and "among the great composers of the century" by The New York Times. "There's just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them," stated The Guardian (London).

Reich has embraced not only Western classical music, but also the structures, harmonies and rhythms of non-Western and American vernacular music, particularly jazz. He studied drumming at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra. He also studied Balinese gamelan music and the traditional forms of cantillation (chanting) of the Hebrew scriptures.

Organizations around the world marked Reich's 70th-birthday year in 2006 with festivals and concerts. In the composer's hometown of New York City, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center joined forces to present his music.

One of Reich's groundbreaking pieces is the 1988 work, "Different Trains," in which recorded speech generates the material for musical instruments. The New York Times hailed "Different Trains" as "a work of such astonishing originality that 'breakthrough' seems the only possible description."

"The Cave," a music/theater/video piece jointly created by Reich and Beryl Korot that explores the Biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac, was described by Time magazine as "a fascinating glimpse of what opera might be like in the 21st century."

Since 1971, Steve Reich and Musicians have toured the world, performing in venues from Carnegie Hall to the Bottom Line Cabaret in Greenwich Village. Reich's music has been commissioned and performed by major orchestras and festivals around the world, including the Festival d'Automne in Paris marking the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. His compositions have been used by noted choreographers, including Jerome Robbins, Laura Dean, Eliot Feld and Alvin Ailey.

The Chubb Fellowship is devoted to encouraging and aiding Yale students interested in the operations of government, culture and public service. Established in 1936 through the generosity of Hendon Chubb (Yale 1895), the program is based in Timothy Dwight College. Each year three or four distinguished women and men have been appointed as visiting Chubb Fellows. While at Yale, they have close, informal contact with students and deliver a public lecture. Former Chubb Fellows include Presidents Ronald Reagan, Raul Alfonsí, and Jimmy Carter; Prime Ministers Clement Atlee and Mario Soares; authors Toni Morrison and Carlos Fuentes; choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov; and performer Harry Belafonte.

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