M U S I C F O R 1 8 M A C H I N E S

Music for 18 Machines - a reimagining of Steve Reich’s minimalist classic Music for 18 Musicians.  Simply put it employs synthesisers in the places of musicians to voice the original work. Reich’s work is a blueprint of the minimalist movement - an exploration of pattern and process. Music for 18 Machines reverses this process in a search to elicit an expressive and emotive performance from 18 electronic instruments being played by a single computer.

In 1974, Reich began writing Music for 18 Musicians. This piece involved many new ideas, although it also hearkened back to earlier pieces. It is based on a cycle of eleven chords introduced at the beginning (called “Pulses”), followed by a small section of music based on each chord (“Sections I-XI”), and finally a return to the original cycle (“Pulses”).

I like novelist Kim Echlin's description "it lasts about an hour... and you feel surprised, as if suddenly waking from a brief dream, when it is over."

The project was conceived by Irish sound designer and composer Simon Cullen and developed in collaboration with Dr. Neil O’Connor.

Music was performed by Simon Cullen, Neil O’Connor, Glenn Keating and Liam Caffrey.

A uniquely commissioned light project had been designed by Algorithim.

Sound system and installation designed by Abe Scheele.