Steve Reich joined the percussion quartet So Percussion on stage in a performance of his 1972 work Clapping Music—"still one of his most audacious and breathtaking creations," says San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kelman—for an all-Reich program at Stanford University's Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Saturday. The program featured the US premiere of Reich's latest piece, Mallet Quartet, along with works from throughout the composer's career, including Music for Pieces of Wood, Four Organs, Nagoya Marimbas, and Drumming Part I.

"There may be no better way to consider a new piece by an established composer than in the context of his earlier works," says Kelman. "That's especially true when the new music marks a departure as intriguing as Steve Reich's new Mallet Quartet."

Kelman, in his review of Saturday's concert, called the program "marvelous," citing "the groundbreaking percussion works from the early 1970s" and the evening's "headline event," the premiere of Mallet Quartet, "a beguiling, beautiful and sometimes perplexing creation."

In So Percussion's hands, the reviewer notes, the composer's signature sound and rhythmic voice, as represented by the older pieces on the program, "remained as magical and arresting as ever." It was the change from Reich's traditional style found in the new work, with its references to jazz and pop, says Kelman, that distinguished it from the earlier works.

Read the the full concert review at sfgate.com.

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San Jose Mercury News reviewer Georgia Rowe says the concert was evidence that, over the decades long arc represented on the program, Reich "has lost none of his ability to charm, mesmerize and occasionally baffle an audience." She calls the concert "a high-energy affair." Despite the potential challenges to an audience for an all-percussion program, she insists, "Reich's music has a way of sustaining listener interest," and the performers "played each piece with tremendous verve and focus."

Of the Mallet Quartet, Rowe writes that the new piece "employs the instruments' soft, liquid sound to beguiling effect," and "So Percussion's performance made it sound irresistible."

Summing up the evening, she concludes of Reich: "He's still a vibrant presence, onstage and off."

Read the complete review at mercurynews.com.

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San Francisco Classical Voice reviewer Jessica Balik says the performers in Saturday's concert "made the virtuosic complexity of Reich’s music abundantly clear." She too comments on the harmonic distinction of the new piece from its predecessors, noting the "lyrical side of Reich," heard in it. Whether the pieces were near 40 years old or new, So Percussion's performance reminded listeners, says Balik, that Reich's work "always sound exciting and new." Read the review at sfcv.org.