Colin Currie on performing the music of Steve Reich with the SCO: “He wants people to have an uplifting emotional reaction”

He’s now further west than the capital, however, in the Cambuslang/Rutherglen area. “It’s brilliant because it’s like coming home, but to a new place,” he says. “I’m still discovering Glasgow, and I’m trying to get as close as I can to as many institutions as will have me.” Those include Chamber Music Scotland, where Currie is now an ambassador, and also the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he’s an associate artist.

You can understand institutions’ eagerness to snap Currie up. If it was another Scottish-born percussionist – a certain Evelyn Glennie – who virtually established percussion as a compelling, powerful and entirely legitimate solo musical medium, Currie has done more than just picking up her mantle. He’s very probably the world’s most accomplished and respected solo percussionist, with his own ensemble (the Colin Currie Group) and record label, in demand as a performer with ensembles right across the world, and on close terms with a whole host of composers, many of whom have written specifically for him.

Currie talks about two of those relationships with particular warmth and affection. The first is with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. “They must have been the first orchestra I ever heard,” he says, “and I still recall hearing Murray Perahia playing a Mozart piano concerto with them in the Queen’s Hall. It was a great privilege to start playing with them myself just a few years later.” The second is with one of today’s most widely loved composers, Steve Reich. And those two relationships come together in the two concerts that Currie directs with the SCO on 9 and 10 November, of which Reich’s music forms the backbone.

“I was a big fan of Steve’s music early on,” Currie smiles, “but the real turning point came in 2006, when the BBC Proms asked me to create a late-night concert for his 70th birthday.” That performance, based around Reich’s epic Drumming, also effectively marked the founding of the Colin Currie Group. “It was the first time I got in contact with him, and we began to exchange messages. I chose my moment to ask him to write a piece for us, and he agreed – it became the Quartet for two pianos and two vibraphones.”

This was clearly the beginning of what became a warm and close professional relationship. “He came to hear the group play live in 2011, and I couldn’t have been more nervous about meeting him. But he was so charming and supportive, and I was taken aback by this humble and interested man – although he was my hero, he’s also this incredibly good bloke. He’s now taken the group under his wing – he’s even referred to us as his musical grandchildren.”

It’s hard to think of a more influential living composer than Reich. In the 1970s and 80s, the reassuring repetitions and easy-going harmonies of minimalism – Reich hates the term, but let’s go with it – represented a profound challenge to the pervading complexities of the rather arid musical modernism, but it’s a style that’s now effectively entered the mainstream. Reich’s musical ideas have permeated classical, pop and more, as well as helping make borders between genres a bit more porous. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood is a fan, for example, and encouraged Reich to rework two of the band’s songs in the composer’s 2013 Radio Rewrite, which forms the SCO concerts’ climax. That piece is just one example of Currie’s plan of demonstrating just how far Reich’s ideas have carried.

Take, for example, the 2013 percussion concerto Tapdance by legendary Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, who died just two years ago. “Louis wrote the piece for me, and dedicated it to me,” explains Currie, “and it’s a great honour. He and Steve were my two absolute bucket-list composers – I would have been honoured to shake their hands, never mind getting them to write music for me.” Andriessen took a distinctively dissonant, aggressive slant on Reich’s repetitions in classic pieces like Hoketus and De Staat – not that there’s much of that in the jazz-inspired Tapdance. “It starts off quite exuberant, but even after the first two or three minutes you can hear it getting into trouble, kind of melting down,” he says. “The percussionist gets three chances at imposing themselves on the music, and it never quite works out. It’s about memories and ideas – it’s a deeply moving piece.”

If Andriessen’s Tapdance seems to slide inexorably towards silence and stillness, at the other end of the energy spectrum is New York-based Julia Wolfe’s fierce and furious Fuel, and Currie begins his concerts with the calming reflections of Arvo Pärt’s austere Fratres (“in a very lovely version for wind octet,” he explains).

And though they might feel somewhat distant from the orchestra’s more traditional performances, the SCO’s Reich-focused concerts follow in the footsteps of last year’s eclectic UN:TITLED gigs and also some of the broader, more challenging repertoire – Andriessen included – that the orchestra explored online during the pandemic. “If some audience members feel unsure or doubtful about music they’re unfamilar with – that’s absolutely fine,” smiles Currie. “Just come along and hear it – I think it’ll be a really broad audience. Steve has done so much for bringing people to new music, encouraging them not to fear it and to enjoy it. One of his main tenets is about music being enjoyable. In rehearsal, he’s rigorous, meticulous and demanding, but ultimately he just wants the performers and listeners to have an uplifting emotional reaction to the music.”

The concerts also reflect Currie’s own developing musical passions: as well as being the solo percussionist in Andriessen’s concerto, and an ensemble musician in Pärt’s Fratres, he’ll be out front as conductor. “My foray into conducting is – well, it’s fair to say I’m going in gently. But I’m compelled by the possibilities that it brings in terms of repertoire and programming. And starting with Steve felt like an obvious place.”

Colin Currie directs the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Steve Reich + at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, on 9 November and the City Halls, Glasgow, on 10 November, see www.sco.org.uk. The Scotsman is the official media partner of the SCO's 50th Anniversary Celebrations. For a 20% discount on tickets across the season, use the code TSMSCO20 when booking.