New York Special

Music Matters

Tom Service talks to Steve Reich, for many one of the most important composers alive today. He visits Carnegie Hall and St George’s Episcopal Church Rutherford Place where Dvorak played a key role in the development of black American classical music. Then to The New School which opened in 1919 as a centre of intellectual and artistic freedom where John Cage studied and taught experimental composition as well as Judson Church where choreographers, artists, and composers met in a socially engaged space to redefine what it is to make art in a spiritual and secular community. Tom also talks to composers and performers Claire Chase and Kamala Sankaram who breathe life and sound into this city, creating a multi-dimensional song that’s as vibrant and visionary as New York has always been.