But did the Arcade Fire concert have four marimbas?

doodoodoodoodoodoodoodoodooDOOdoodoodoodoodoodoodoodoodoo...

The Steve Reich concert at UdeM last night was good clean minimalist fun before a pretty impressively sized crowd. The first half of the program had some smaller works (Music for Pieces of Wood, New York Counterpoint, Nagoya Marimbas) that were obviously not easy to perform, but the students hung with it and did a fair job. There were some tense moments in between grooves, but that's often expected when amateur musicians play this music.

Music for 18 Musicians was excellent. The pulses stayed consistent and the group brought out a lot of the music's layered dynamic effects. At over an hour in length, it's an endurance test for musicians and listeners alike, but judging from the audience's noddings and rapt attention and subsequent standing ovation, they were into it for the whole way.

I'm still in a bit of a minimalist stupor this morning, especially since CKUT is broadcasting all of 18 right now. Once again, yay for college radio.

Finally, I still think this is really cool, and not simply because of its creative use of Pez dispensers.