when Reich and partners recorded it in May 1986, Sextet was a recent composition - the product info in the booklet assigns it to 1985, but the liner notes make it clear that it was premiered in December 1984 in Paris, although in an incomplete version. It was originally conceived for a dance performance with the Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, and the completed version had its American (danced) Premiere on October 31, 1985 at the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The premiere concert performance took place at Avery Fischer Hall on January 20, 1986, presumably with the same performers as here. Its dance origin makes it a lively and entertaining piece, and its scoring for three marimbas, two vibraphones, two bass drums, two pianos, two synthesizers and various other percussion instruments provides for a great variety of colors. In particular, the long moans of the bowed vibraphone (I think that is what it is) that plays in track 2 are particularly eerie and fascinating, reminiscent of a musical saw, really. I'm no great fan of the minimalist/repetitive music of Glass and Adams, I sometimes make an exception for Riley (both in his early repetitive period and in his later, world-music influenced style), and I'll make one too for Reich. I've found pieces like Drumming or Six Pianos to be very entertaining, and I'll add this one. Speaking of Six Pianos (1973), Six Marimbas is in fact the re-rescoring of it, made in 1986 - also a recent piece when the recording was made, then.

The best version I've heard of the original Six Pianos is not Reich's (Reich: Drumming; Six Pianos; Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ), but the more recent one by Piano Circus (Steve Reich: Six Pianos; Terry Riley: In C): dynamic, playful, high-tension, colorful, sparkling - and better recorded. Comparatively, the effect of the version for marimbas (played here at a perceptibly slower tempo, too) is softer, sweeter, more soothing, less percussive, less scintillating in its timbral colors - and somewhat more monotonous in its overall effect, to my ears, but certainly less agressive, too.


If I may dare, Six Pianos is music from New York, Six Marimbas music for the California beaches. Reich was born in New York, but after the divorce of his parents, when he was one year old, he divided his time between New York and California.

Please replace the cd box. Rest is VG.