Performance

Music for 18 Musicians: Staged Variations

1 upcoming performance in New York

At Park Avenue Armory, *Music for 18 Musicians: Staged Variations* reframes Steve Reich’s landmark score as a live, staged jazz-adjacent performance. Alan Pierson leads the Steve Reich Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, and musicians from the Manhattan School of Music through its pulsing cycles, where shifts in harmony become the drama. Reich’s work has long been part of New York’s contemporary-music history, and this version treats that legacy as material to be re-ordered in public. The result is rigorous, with the staging clarifying structure rather than decorating it.