The anniversary of the September 11 attacks is here. It is a Sunday this year, already a sacred day for some. And it is a decade later, a time for the last of the great moving tributes. Among many of these, experimental music composer Steve Reich has offered WTC 9/11.
Commissioned and performed by Kronos Quartet, WTC 9/11 weaves emergency calls and other documentary recordings into a complex, urgent composition. As a memorial service, these 37 minutes are moving, and without equal. But it is difficult to say whether or not the piece stands as tall in strictly musical terms (the groundcover here is quite dense, so we’re not recommending that you listen, we’re recommend that you listen repeatedly, over the course of several days). Yet to cite two examples — the use of a busy signal as a metronome, and use of a two-way radio shout of “Mayday” as a field recording — the touches can be truly harrowing at times.
