condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (small sticker removal residue and light general wear)
The first ECM release of Reich's music, and one of the recordings that defined the late-seventies new-music landscape. Recorded at Big Apple Studios, New York, with members of Steve Reich and Musicians: Reich and Nurit Tilles on pianos, Bob Becker, Russ Hartenberger, Glen Velez and James Preiss on mallets, Pamela Fraley, Jay Clayton, Rebecca Armstrong and Elizabeth Arnold on voice, Virgil Blackwell and Richard Cohen on clarinets, Shem Guibbory on violin, Ken Ishii on cello.
Reich wrote Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76) around a cycle of eleven chords played at the start and end of the piece; each chord becomes the harmonic centre of one of eleven sections. The pulsing breath-led "human cadence" (singers and clarinettists sustain notes for the length of one breath) gives the piece its distinctive respiratory quality. ECM's typography-led sleeve under Manfred Eicher's production aesthetic became as canonical as the music. The work has since received multiple recordings; this remains the document of the original ensemble.
