Steve Reich's Musical Journey

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For most people, like myself, music is the combination of chords, instruments, and voices which create songs. For Steve Reich, any sound can be looped together until that original sound is unrecognizable to form a musical tune and beat. At a young age, Reich was introduced to music and the piano, and from there, his musical passion has all but diminished. Steve Reich is a minimalist who started a whole movement on behalf of his works. He is known for turning any sound into music.
Steve Reich was born in New York to two musically talented parents. At the ripe, young age of one, his parents divorced and his mother moved across the country from New York to Las Angeles, California. Not wanting to lose contact with either parent, Reich spent his childhood traveling the distance across the country via train to spend adequate time with both his mother and father. These frequent trips and the repetitive clacking of the train tracks got Reich's imagination rolling and ultimately began his musical journey and …show more content…

At first, his ensemble consisted of only three members, but it quickly increased in size to about eighteen or more. With this assembly of talented musicians, Reich pushed the boundaries of music and created something no one had ever experience before. During this time, Reich had learned of his Jewish heritage. He was aware that had he been living in Europe instead of America, his life would have turned out much differently. This all contributed to his different take on traditional music (Puca). In addition to his education at Julliard School of Music, Reich also earned his master's degree in music at Mills College in California. During his time at Mills, Reich focused on rhythmic music, which later morphed into the repetitive music that he is known for today. A fellow musician of Reich, Terry Riley, was a huge influence on Reich's repetitive style (Steve

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