The 2006 RTÉ Living Music Festival in February celebrates the work of American composer Steve Reich.

Highlights of this year's Festival will include a public interview and a composition seminar with Steve Reich on his first visit to Ireland, a 10-hour ‘marathon’, and a return visit to Dublin by the Reich specialists Ensemble Modern following their acclaimed Irish début in the 2005 festival. Steve Reich participates in the festival with the support of the UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies.

The 2006 festival will also feature the music of other leading composers of recent times, such as Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt and John Adams. Marking the centenary year of Samuel Beckett, the festival will include Morton Feldman’s one-act opera Neither, a setting of a Beckett text.

Irish music highlights include the world premières of three pieces commissioned for the festival by RTÉ from Simon O’Connor, Kevin Volans and Jennifer Walshe.

Ensemble Modern

Looking forward to the RTÉ Living Music Festival, artistic director Donnacha Dennehy said: ‘I remember vividly the day I first heard Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, and fell in love. This was not just a love for that piece, but a love for a whole new sound. It is particularly meaningful for me that this festival, forming the largest concentration on the work of Steve Reich that this country has ever experienced, will finish with that iconic work played by one of the world’s greatest groups, Ensemble Modern. Building up to that, and including an all-day marathon event on the Saturday, will be a riotous celebration of his work in the context of other major figures such as Morton Feldman, Arvo Pärt and many others.

‘Alex Ross, writing in the New Yorker magazine, recently declared Reich “the most original musical thinker of our time”. But this may conjure up an image of an obscure cult figure living in an attic. Far from it! Steve Reich is not just known to a small group of new music cognoscenti, or those interested in classical music. His reach spans across all genres of music, from new classical to electronica (and many others in between). I can hardly think of another musician so influential outside his own area. I am delighted that Steve Reich will be attending in person to partake in the festival.’

Under the artistic direction of composer Donnacha Dennehy the 2006 festival takes place from Friday 17 to Sunday 19 February 2006. It moves from northside venue The Helix to the O’Reilly Theatre (Belvedere College, Great Denmark Street), the National Concert Hall and Project Arts Centre in the city centre.

The 2006 RTÉ Living Music Festival is sponsored by IMRO, the Irish Music Rights Organisation. For programme details, please visit the Calendar.

Posted: 5 January 2006