Three Tales

Steve Reich & Beryl Korot

Steve Reich will celebrate his 80th birthday on 3 October. On the occasion of the NUIT BLANCHE, La Monnaie pays tribute to the pioneering figure of American minimal music and presents some of his innovative works in the Résidence Palace’s theatre and hall of mirrors. A truly exceptional event held in one of Brussels’ masterpieces of Art Déco, which is rarely opened to the public.

Three Tales is a video-opera created in 2002 by Steve Reich and his wife, video maker Beryl Korot. As a counterpoint to Reich’s music performed live, a multimedia montage in three acts* projected onto a large screen puts three symbolic 20th-century technological advances into perspective: the Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg, nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll and the cloning of Dolly the sheep. A dark philosophical tale about history and the excesses of technology.
(* Each audience group will have access to just one of the three acts of the video-opera.)

One of Steve Reich’s first works, Pendulum Music (1968), is a “sound installation for microphones, amplifiers, speakers and performers” where the composer “reveals” the principle of phasing in music. Displaced by a performer, suspended microphones swing above speakers, causing feedback effects that gradually overlap.
(To be seen after Three Tales.)