THE NEW YORKER: Tristan Perich: “Drift Multiply”
THE NEW YORKER: Tristan Perich: “Drift Multiply”
BY STEVE SMITH
“Minimalist music is too often characterized by its focus on process, regularity, and economy. But ‘Drift Multiply,’ the biggest work to date by the New York composer and inventor Tristan Perich, instead emphasizes the style’s capacity for elemental beauty. Commissioned by Issue Project Room and introduced at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 2018, the piece involves fifty violinists—here, a Dutch cohort conducted by Doug Perkins—and fifty channels of Perich’s trademark one-bit electronics. Throughout episodes of ecstatic, shimmering reverie and eerie white-noise stasis, Perich’s music casts a mesmerizing spell.”