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Nonesuch released Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Steve Reich’s album Radio Rewrite on September 30, 2014 (in the UK, October 6). Co-commissioned for and recorded by Alarm Will Sound, the title piece references two songs by the English band Radiohead. Alan Pierson conducts this premiere recording of Radio Rewrite, which was composed in 2012. The album also includes recordings of Electric Counterpoint (1987) and Piano Counterpoint, which is a 2011 transcription by Vincent Corver of Reich’s 1973 Six Pianos; the works are performed, respectively, by Radiohead’s guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, and pianist Vicky Chow, who is a member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Reich says of his new piece: “Over the years composers have used pre-existing music (folk or classical) as material for new pieces of their own. Radio Rewrite, along with Proverb (Perotin) and Finishing the Hat—Two Pianos (Sondheim), is my modest contribution to this genre.” He continues, “Now, in the early 21st century, we live in an age of remixes where musicians take audio samples of other music and remix them into audio of their own. Being a composer who works with musical notation I chose to reference two songs from the rock group Radiohead for an ensemble of musicians playing non-rock instruments: ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ and ‘Jigsaw Falling into Place.’”

Reich and Greenwood met in Krakow in 2010 during a festival of Reich’s music, where Greenwood gave a performance of Electric Counterpoint that its composer liked very much. (Greenwood has since performed it many more times, including during a London tribute to Nonesuch’s 50th anniversary at the Barbican Centre.) Reich says, “When I returned home I made it a point to go online and listen to Radiohead’s music and the two songs mentioned above stuck in my head. It was not my intention to make anything like ‘variations’ on these songs, but rather to draw on their harmonies and sometimes melodic fragments and work them into my own piece. As to actually hearing the original songs, the truth is—sometimes you hear them and sometimes you don’t.”

Electric Counterpoint was commissioned by BAM for guitarist Pat Metheny. It is the third in a series of pieces (first Vermont Counterpoint in 1982 for flutist Ransom Wilson followed by New York Counterpoint in 1985 for clarinetist Richard Stolzman) with a soloist playing against a pre-recorded tape of themselves. In Electric Counterpoint the soloist pre-records as many as ten guitars and two electric bass parts and then plays the final eleventh guitar part live against the tape.

Reich says Piano Counterpoint “is an arrangement of Six Pianos in which four of the six piano parts are pre-recorded and the last two are combined into a more virtuosic single part played live. For these last two parts to be played by a single pianist it was necessary to move some of the melodic patterns up an octave giving the piece an increased sparkle and intensity. The amplification of the live player along with the pre-recorded playback adds additional electricity. Combined with the practicality of needing only a solo pianist, this arrangement can be heard as improving on the original.”

credits

released March 10, 2016

MUSICIANS
Electric Counterpoint (1987)
Jonny Greenwood, guitar
Piano Counterpoint (1973, arr. 2011)
Arrangement of Six Pianos for piano and tape by Vincent Corver
Vicky Chow, piano
Radio Rewrite (2013)
Alarm Will Sound
Alan Pierson, conductor
Erin Lesser, flute
Elisabeth Stimpert, clarinet
Christopher Thompson, Matt Smallcomb, vibraphone
John Orfe, Michael Harley, piano
Courtney Orlando, Caleb Burhans, violin
Nathan Schram, viola
Stefan Freund, violoncello
Miles Brown, electric bass
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Electric Counterpoint
Produced, Recorded, and Mixed by Graeme Stewart
Mastered by Christian Wright at Abbey Road Studios, London
Commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. World Premiere: November 5, 1987, by Pat Metheny, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY.
Piano Counterpoint
Recorded by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio, Yonkers, NY
Hamburg Steinway D prepared by Arlan Harris
Mixed and Edited by Florent Ghys
World Premiere: October 23, 2012, by Vincent Corver, at the Pearl, Doha, Qatar.
Radio Rewrite
Produced by Judith Sherman
Recorded April 3, 2014, in Studio A at Avatar Studios, New York, NY
Engineer: John Kilgore
Assistant Engineer: Tim Marchiafava
Production Assistant: Jeanne Velonis
Mixed by Judith Sherman, John Kilgore, Steve Reich, and Alan Pierson at John Kilgore Sound & Recording, New York, NY
Co-commissioned by the London Sinfonietta and Alarm Will Sound. World Premiere: March 5, 2013, by Sound Intermedia / London Sinfonietta / Brad Lubman, at the Royal Festival Hall, London.
Album Mastered by Robert C. Ludwig at Gateway Mastering Studios, Portland, ME
Design by Barbara deWilde Design
Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz

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