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Steve Reich visits Knoxville for the 2014 Big Ears Festival

Jeffrey Herman

The New York Times has recently called Steve Reich, "our greatest living composer" and The Guardian (London) has stated that: "There's just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history...and Steve Reich is one of them."

In 1990, he received a Grammy award for best Contemporary composition and in 2009, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music for his composition "Double Sextet." 

Mr. Reich is visiting the Knoxville area as a featured artist of this year's Big Ears Festival.  This is a unique three-day event that attracts music-lovers from all over the world, who come to hear something they've never heard before. The goal of the festival is to "entertain, excite, provoke and inspire the creative spirit in all who attend."

In this interview, Mr. Reich talks about each of his works that are going to be performed at the festival, and  also a little bit about how he continues to be inspired to create new music and where he finds this inspiration.  He also discusses how he believes that classical music (or, notated music) audiences aren't "dying," contrary to popular belief... rather, they're growing, evolving, and changing.

Melony calls the beautiful mountains of Boone, N.C., home, although she was born near Greensboro, N.C. There’s just something about those Blue Ridge Mountains that got in her blood and never left after she moved there to attend Appalachian State University (ASU). While at ASU, she majored in piano performance and music therapy and began to cultivate a love for accompanying and for collaborating with other musicians. This soon led her to earn a master’s degree in collaborative piano at the University of Tennessee, which she attended from 2006-2008.