Summer-Festival: In the Streets: City Stage - Opening

The bright Festival flags are fluttering, the equally colorful Festival benches are in place, and the crowds are streaming toward the KKL Lucerne: you can see when it’s Summer Festival season. And from now on, you can hear it, too. “In the Streets: City Stage” sets all of Lucerne resounding. For six days, from 25 to 30 August, the young musicians of the Lucerne Festival Academy and other ensembles fan out across the city to bring music to every corner - sometimes announced, sometimes popping up out of nowhere. Expect the unexpected! The kickoff features a percussion quartet performing works by Steve Reich, including his cult classic Drumming. As one of the masterminds of American Minimalism, Reich repeats simple motives and rhythms in endless loops, gradually shifting them against one another. The result - inspired in no small part by the polyrhythmic drumming he encountered during a trip to Ghana- is a hypnotic, hard-to-resist groove.

Performers:
Percussion ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)

Program:
“Rhythm ’n’ Loops”

Steve Reich (*1936)
Mallet Quartet for two marimbas and two vibraphones
Music for Pieces of Wood for four pairs of tuned claves
Clapping Music
Drumming, Part One for four pairs of tuned bongos