One of my heroes, Steve Reich, turns 70 this year, so I trekked to New York for the "Steve Reich@70" celebration concert at Carnegie Hall. Perhaps the most successful and distinctive voice to rise out of the minimalism pioneered by La Monte Young and Terry Riley in the 1960s, Reich did what few composers of his generation dared to do: cherry pick his influences oblivious to (now obsolete) distinctions between highbrow and pop. Reich's long-sustained lines, sometimes notated as breath lengths rather than standard beats, derive from the medieval organum of Perotin, while his danceable counterpoint borrows liberally from J. S. Bach and Stravinsky. But Reich's most important innovation comes from his interest in pop music, Ghanaian drumming, jazz—he saw John Coltrane perform live 50 times—and Indonesian gamelan. Reich not only heard the bop drummers of the late 1940s and '50s convert rhythmic accompaniment into propulsive, melodic interjections, but took another step, fusing rhythm and melody in works such as Drumming (1971), Music for 18 Musicians (1976), and Tehillim (1981). Reich's general avoidance of standard instrumental formations (string quartet, piano trio, the symphony orchestra) testifies to his DIY roots and outsider status.
The first two pieces on the program, Electric Counterpoint and Different Trains, suffered from the lush, blooming acoustics of Carnegie Hall. Written for electric guitar and prerecorded sound, Electric Counterpoint, like other pieces in Reich's "Counterpoint" series, enmeshes a single family of overdubbed instruments (e.g., flute, clarinet, guitar) in buoyantly interlocking guitar picking. Alas, Pat Metheny's mic'd guitar amplifier was fed into the mix; when combined with the backing tracks, Metheny's distinct and disparate amp tone smothered the backing tracks and eradicated the contrapuntal essence of the work. Different Trains, scored for string quartet and prerecorded sound, sounded better when Reich took over at the mixing board. Unlike the single notes of Electric Counterpoint, Different Trains employs timbrally rich, broadband samples of speech as well as thick, sustained string chords and train whistles. Yet many of the spoken phrases such as "crack train to New York" were mangled into incomprehensible mush, a crucial omission as the string parts often mimic the inflection of the voices. Judicious panning might have delineated the sounds, but to my ears, Carnegie Hall swallowed any spatialization that might have taken place behind the mixing board. An aural mirage of percolating marimbas, xylophones, and pianos, Reich's landmark Music for 18 Musicians sounded better and rocked the house. How many other hour-long pieces written in the last 30 years still sound fresh? The packed hall cheered, stamped, and hollered, something that would never happen at a straight-up "classical" concert.
Finally, I recommend checking out a benefit for the Seattle Improvised Music Festival (Sun Nov 5, Gallery 1412, 1412 18th Ave, 322-1533, 8 pm, $5—$15 sliding scale donation). Dozens of avant musicians each play a one-minute solo, providing an excellent sonic snapshot of the local improvised-music scene. 
