LONDON SINFONIETTA & JONNY GREENWOOD: STEVE REICH

Step into the shimmering soundworld of the architect of minimalism, US composer Steve Reich, with the London Sinfonietta and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. It’s hard to resist the pull of Reich’s music: bright, propulsive rhythms that slip and shift, opening out into glowing harmony. Just days before his 90th birthday, the London Sinfonietta and Jonny Greenwood perform works that have shaped their world. Written especially for the ensemble, Radio Rewrite sees Reich reimagine two songs by Radiohead, refracted through his unmistakable rhythmic lens. After joining the ensemble for Pulse, Jonny Greenwood plays Electric Counterpoint, in which a lone electric guitar weaves itself into a maze of lines, splintering and recombining in hypnotic motion. And City Life captures the pulse of Reich’s home city, New York – a collage of street sounds, voices and machinery, alive with constant movement. I love the impermanence of the music live: it’s played in the room – which is itself infinitely variable from one concert to another – and then it’s gone, soaked into the walls - Jonny Greenwood.