Colin Currie Group returns to the BBC Proms 20 years after its debut

© Frances Marshall

Following their concert at the Edinburgh International Festival, Colin and the Colin Currie Group will return to the BBC Proms on Wednesday 2 September for a special late-night performance of Steve Reich’s Tehillim - continuing their celebrations for the composer’s 90th birthday year.

Listen live from 10:15pm BST on BBC Radio 3.

The concert will also feature British vocal consort The Gesualdo Six and director Owain Park who will perform choral music by Hildegard of Bingen, Machaut, Josquin and Pérotin.

The Colin Currie Group was formed in 2006 specifically for the BBC Proms’ celebration of Reich’s 70th birthday. Led by percussionist Colin, the newly assembled ensemble performed Drumming for the first time, in a performance that marked beginning of the ensemble that have now developed into one of the world’s leading interpreters of Reich’s music.

Reich has also now written three works for the Group: Quartet, which was premiered at London’s Southbank Centre in 2014, Traveler’s Prayer in 2021, and the latest In All Your Ways, which receives its premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival this weekend.

Colin Currie Group give world premiere of new Steve Reich work at Edinburgh International Festival

© Frances Marshall

Colin will lead the Colin Currie Group in the world premiere of Steve Reich’s latest work, In All Your Ways, at the Edinburgh International Festival on 28 August 2026, marking a major moment in the composer’s 90th-birthday celebrations.

This will be an all-Reich programme at Usher Hall, which also includes the world premiere of Two Pianos, along with Clapping Music, Quartet, Radio Rewrite and Double Sextet, which featured on the Group’s latest album Steve Reich: The Sextets on Colin Currie Records, released earlier this year. Following the premiere performance, the programme will be toured throughout the UK and Europe:

19 September - NTR Zaterdag Matinee, The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
28 October - The Barbican, London
15 November - Philharmonie de Paris
4 December - Elbphilharnonie Hamburg

The new piece is co-commissioned by Edinburgh International Festival, NTR Zaterdag Matinee, The Barbican, Philharmonie de Paris and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and more yet to be announced. It is the third work that Reich has written specially for the Colin Currie Group, following Quartet in 2014 and the critically acclaimed Traveler’s Prayer, which the Group toured to The Concertgebouw, Royal Festival Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Carnegie Hall, and Tokyo Opera City.

Colin Currie Group returns to Bold Tendencies

Peckham Multi-Storey Car Park © Bold Tendencies

On Saturday 4 July, Colin and the Colin Currie Group return to Peckham's iconic rooftop car park for another appearance at Bold Tendencies, following the success of their Reich Repetitions programme last year.

This time, they perform Steve Reich's seminal Drumming—the work that launched the group 20 years ago in a BBC Proms performance celebrating Reich's 70th birthday. The concert also marks the 20th anniversary of Bold Tendencies and forms part of Colin's celebrations of Steve Reich's 90th birthday year.

Dating from 1971, Drumming is an epic work for nine percussionists, two vocalists and a piccolo player, and employs Reich’s trademark phasing technique. Over four connected parts, the composer explores different instrument groups, first focusing on bongo drums, then marimbas and glockenspiels before the complete ensemble come together for the piece’s climax. 

In 2018, the Colin Currie Group released Drumming on Colin Currie Records. Stream & purchase here.

Watch Colin and the Colin Currie Quartet perform Drumming Part 1 live from ConcertLab Utrecht:

Colin Currie performs world premiere of Tansy Davies' 'Earthworks' at Aldeburgh Festival

© Frances Marshall

On 19 June, Colin will return to the Aldeburgh Festival alongside the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Kevin John Edusei to perform the World Premiere of Tansy Davies’ Earthworks for percussion and orchestra. The performance will also mark Colin’s 40th Concerto Premiere of his career.

The concert will be broadcast live by BBC Radio 3 from 7.30pm BST, and will be available afterwards on BBC Sounds.

Commissioned by Britten Pears Arts, Residentie Orkest The Hague, and with the support of an anonymous donor, Earthworks is a geologically-inspired percussion concerto composed for Colin. It takes inspiration from vast geoglyphs like the Uffington White Horse and the Acre structures of the Amazon rainforest, revealed by deforestation.

It recalls an earlier work – the ritualistic, rhythmic Dark Ground for solo percussion, which Colin recorded on Colin Currie Records in February 2025. Currie calls Dark Ground  “stridently disquieting …it seems it could be a pop-style drum-kit that is to hand for the music, but conflicting sounds from another kind of place are never far away”.  

Read more about the world premiere here.

In 2023, Colin presented the 2023 Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection to Davies, remarking on her “uncanny ability to reconcile the edgier elements of pop and funk into vastly ambitious and immensely satisfying structures of truly classical sensibilities.”

Colin Currie Group celebrates The Martland Band

© Frances Marshall

This Friday 17 April, Colin and the Colin Currie Group return to London’s Kings Place to perform an all-Steve Martland programme as part of the venue’s wider tribute to the composer across their season.

The Group will, as usual, be led by Colin, who will perform on marimba in Horses of Instruction and Starry Night, and will also conduct the larger band in the second half of the concert. For Colin, Steve Martland was both a mentor and friend, and performed in the Steve Martland Band in some of his earliest professional engagements as a percussionist.

Colin second from left in the original Steve Martland band.

The band will be hand-picked by Currie for this special performance, and will feature musicians who played in the original Martland Band, or have other connections to the composer and his music. The programme will revive some of his best known band works: Kick, Beat the Retreat and Eternal Delight.

Watch a special feature video with Colin and Kings Place ahead of the concert below:

Colin Currie Group releases landmark new album Steve Reich: The Sextets on Colin Currie Records

Today, Colin and the Colin Currie Group have released their new album: Steve Reich The Sextets, marking the composer’s 90th birthday year and the 20th anniversary of the Colin Currie Group. The album is the first time all of Reich’s works for sextet forces – Sextet, Double Sextet, Dance Patterns and Six Marimbas – have ever been compiled on a single album.

This release is the sixth album on Colin Currie Records, which was launched in 2017 with the release of the Colin Currie Group’s landmark first recording of Steve Reich’s Drumming.

Stream/purchase Steve Reich The Sextets.

This new album was made possible by a successful Kickstarter campaign, enthusiastically and kindly backed by supporters of the group and Steve Reich. It was then recorded at London’s Kings Place in August 2025.

Colin Currie Quartet perform in Birmingham and Cambridge

© Frances Marshall

This week, the Colin Currie Quartet give performances at Birmingham’s Barber Institute and West Road Concert Hall Cambridge.

On 24 March at the Barber Institute, Colin will lead a public workshop on Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, leading to a mass performance of the work at Elgar Concert Hall. The following evening, The Colin Currie Quartet will present works by upcoming young composers such as Andy Akiho and Aileen Sweeney, alongside Julia Wolfe’s compelling work for 4 drum-kits, Dark Full Ride, and music by Steve Reich: Nagoya Marimbas, Mallet Quartet and Drumming Part 1. The Quartet will then repeat the programme on 27 March as part of the Cambridge Music Festival.

In January, the Colin Currie Quartet gave the world premiere of a new work by Joe Duddell at King’s Place, This Place, These People, a set of musical portraits of people from the King’s Cross migrant community. Earlier in the season the Quartet appeared at Two Moors Festival and ConcertLAB in Utrecht, and in June they perform in Czechia at the Concentus Moraviae festival.

Watch the Colin Currie Quartet perform Steve Reich’s Drumming Part 1 in Utrecht: