condition (record/cover): NM / NM
Two percussion-led pieces. Sextet (1984-85), Side A, scored for four percussionists plus two keyboardists, is one of Reich's most rhythmically intricate works: six players, twenty-eight minutes, five movements, the keyboards' sustained chords cutting through the percussion's polyrhythmic accumulation. Premiered by Manhattan Marimba Quartet with Nexus percussionists at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December 1985.
Side B is Six Marimbas (1986), a re-scoring for marimbas alone of the 1973 Six Pianos (the original had used pianos for purely practical reasons). The piece returns to the additive process of the early seventies works but in the warmer wood-resonant register of the marimba. Steve Reich and Musicians: Bob Becker, Russ Hartenberger, Glen Velez, Garry Kvistad, James Preiss, Thad Wheeler. Edmund Niemann and Nurit Tilles on pianos in Sextet. Judith Sherman produced.
