Steve Reich – Steve Reich: Jacob’s Ladder/Traveler’s Prayer (2025) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Steve Reich – Steve Reich: Jacob’s Ladder/Traveler’s Prayer (2025)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 31:41 minutes | 622 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch

2025 marks the fortieth anniversary of Steve Reich’s partnership with Nonesuch, the New York label having the privilege of recording every new work by the minimalist composer since 1985’s The Desert Music—one of Reich’s most ambitious pieces in terms of its huge cast of 30 singers and 90-piece orchestra. More modest in nomenclature and duration, Traveler’s Prayer and Jacob’s Ladder were composed in 2020 and 2023 respectively. These two works have in common that they draw on biblical episodes, and articulate their reflections around the notion of the journey, one envisaged in both its physical and spiritual dimensions. This double recording is presented here by the conductors and ensembles who globally premiered these works: Jaap van Zweden at the head of the New York Philharmonic (Jacob’s Ladder) and the Collin Currie Group (Traveler’s Prayer). The Synergy Vocals choir joins each production and overall, the casting is obvious, as all these groups have worked closely with the composer for many years.The COVID-19 pandemic turned the world order upside down just as Reich had begun composing Traveler’s Prayer. The text of the piece, based on short extracts from the books of Genesis, Exodus and Psalms, is an integral part of a prayer usually recited in Jewish tradition to protect the traveler on his journey. With successive confinements severely restricting the movement of the world’s population between 2020 and 2022, the words of Traveler’s Prayer take on a whole new meaning for Steve Reich, who, approaching 90, certainly sees his next journey as his last, the one that will take him from our world to the next.

With Traveler’s Prayer, Reich largely abandons his trademark pulsation for the first time in his musical career. The subject is freed from all metricity in favor of a very free scansion, in which the sung word unfolds in a very free space, only just reframed by the low chords struck by the piano. In Jacob’s Ladder, Reich uses the image of a ladder to create melodic lines with ascending and descending movements, carried by a familiar instrumentarium combining woodwinds/vibraphones and strings, thus representing the junction between the earthly world and the heavens. The text takes up less space than in Reich’s other biblically inspired works. In Reich’s own words, this is “a commentary without words, in which the sung parts account for only 40% of the work.” – Pierre Lamy

Tracklist:

1-1. Steve Reich – Jacob’s Ladder: I. Genesis 28:12 (04:05)
1-2. Steve Reich – Jacob’s Ladder: II. Vayachalom (And he dreamed) (02:27)
1-3. Steve Reich – Jacob’s Ladder: III. V’hinei, sulam mutzav artza (And behold, a ladder set up on the Earth) (03:20)
1-4. Steve Reich – Jacob’s Ladder: IV. V’rosho magia hashamayima (And its top reached heaven) (03:41)
1-5. Steve Reich – Jacob’s Ladder: V. V’hinei, malachei Elokim olim v’yordim bo (And behold, messengers of G-d ascending and descending on it) (05:35)
1-6. Steve Reich – Traveler’s Prayer (12:32)

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