Flights of Fancy

Composer Steve Reich's latest release is a video opera whose principal characters include the Hindenburg, the famous B-29 "Enola Gay," and Dolly the first cloned sheep. And "as the crow flies" henceforth will mean "in First Class, with a backup guitarist," now that Sheryl Crow has performed a gig on a US airliner.

Reich has been called "America’s greatest living composer" (The Village Voice), “the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker), and “among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times). Best known for his hypnotic, pulsing pieces such as "Music for 18 Musicians," "Piano Phase," and "Different Trains," Reich has recently created a "video opera" with video-art pioneer Beryl Korot.

"Three Tales" fuses video imagery and another of Reich's haunting scores, projecting Korot's collage of newsreel footage, talking heads and other imagery behind an array of live singers and instrumentalists.

A new DVD/CD combination from Nonesuch Records captures this musical documentary of 20th century technology, whose three main sections feature the Hindenburg disaster, the development of nuclear weapons, and genetic engineering.

Music reviewers at the UK Guardian called the images "dazzling" and praised Three Tales' "complexity" and "imaginative synthesis," while science magazine Discover found "strange and terrible beauty" and "extraordinary power" in the work.

Read an Oct. 2003 review by the Guardian

Learn more by visiting the Nonesuch label site

or the composer's own site (with biography, discography, concert information, and the complete libretto of "Three Tales")