Steve Reich featured in a forum and in a concert of his music

Alumnus and noted contemporary composer Steve Reich will present a Composer's Forum Friday at 1:25 p.m. in Barnes Hall, and then will have his music performed the next night.

Reich '57, who also will receive the Cornell Alumni Award for Distinction in the Arts on Friday night (see story), won a Grammy Award for best contemporary composition in 1990 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994. His appearance at Cornell is co-sponsored by the Cornell Council for the Arts.

Reich's music will be performed by the Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players (CCCP) Saturday at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Selections will include Music for Pieces of Wood, Nagoya Marimbas and Six Marimbas. Also performing will be the Ithaca College School of Music Percussion Ensemble with Gordon Stout, Ithaca College associate professor of percussion.

Reich's goal in writing Music for Pieces of Wood (1973), he says, was to compose music employing the simplest instruments possible -- in this case the claves, because of their different and exact pitches and timbre. "This happens to be one of the loudest pieces of music I have ever written, though it uses no amplification whatsoever. Its rhythmic structure is based on a process in which some rhythm pattern is building up in the course of substituting beats for rests," he said.

The piece will be presented by five of the Ithaca College ensemble's percussionists.

Nagoya Marimbas (1994) was commissioned by the Conservatory in Nagoya, Japan, to mark the opening of a new concert hall. Six Marimbas will be played by six members of the ensemble. Composed in 1986, it is a rescoring for marimbas of Reich's earlier Six Pianos (1973).

In addition to the concert and his appearance at the Composer's Forum, Reich will hold a master class Saturday at 2:30 p.m. This will be an informal session with undergraduate music students from jazz history, world music and other courses discussing the relationship of Reich's work to jazz, African drumming and other forms of music.

Reich's appearance at Cornell is just one of the highlights of this week's music department offerings.

Guest pianist Steven Lubin will present a lecture recital on Schumann's Carnaval Sunday, Feb. 15, at 3 p.m. in Barnes Hall. A major figure in early-music movement for two decades, Lubin made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1977. He was a principal soloist in the 1985 British television series "Man and Music," which further heightened international awareness of his work. He was chosen by the producer Peter Wadland of Decca Records to record the five piano concertos of Beethoven with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, a recording cited as definitive by many critics internationally. A Harvard University philosophy major, Lubin holds a master's degree and a doctorate from the Juilliard School and New York University, respectively.

Cornell soprano Judith Kellock will present a recital program Monday, Feb. 16, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Assisted by Robert Weirich on piano and Ray Jackendoff on clarinet, Kellock, an associate professor of music, will perform Drei Morgenstern-Lieder, Letters Found Near a Suicide, and Rorem's Ariel, a song cycle based on the poems of Sylvia Plath, among other works. Weirich, a member of the Syracuse University music faculty, is artistic director of the Skaneateles Festival. Jackendoff is a member of the Brandeis University linguistics faculty.