News

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 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 performs at Sheffield's Music In the Round

© Frances Marshall

This weekend, Colin performs at Upper Chapel Sheffield, as part of the Percussion, Pattern & Primes weekend by Music In The Round.

Colin will open the concert with five solo works consisting of Kevin Volans’s Asanga, David Horne’s Pulse, Andy Akiho’s Spiel, Bryce Dessner’s Tromp Miniature, and Rolf Wallin’s Realismos Mágicos. He will then be joined by string quartet Ensemble 360 for Andy Akiho’s ‎Aluminous, Robert Honstein’s Continuous interior for vibraphone & strings, and the UK premiere of Sam Adams’s Sundial.

Sam Adams - son of American composer John Adams - shares that Sundial “explores ideas of resonance and brightness.” and that “In many passages, the strings elongate the percussion sounds and vice versa, so much so that the instruments on stage might sound like one polyphonic organism arranged not in a hierarchy but in a symbiotic web in which the roles of the instruments are balanced and consistently in flux.”

Read more about the work here.

Colin Currie performs consecutive concerts with the Belgian National Orchestra

© Frances Marshall

This week, Colin joins the Belgian National Orchestra for two consecutive concerts across Belgium as part of BOZAR’s spotlight on composer Julia Wolfe, and the Beats & Pieces festival. Concerts take place on 15 January at Bozar, Centre for Fine Arts, and 16 January at the Philharmonic Hall of Liege.

“In ‘Body Language’, I give Colin an entirely new challenge: to deploy his virtuosity in a completely different way.”
— Julia Wolfe

Colin will first take the stage to perform Julia Wolfe’s Body Language - a work composed for Colin, in which he gave the world premiere in 2012 alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra. Julia describes her work as “urban folk music for the orchestra”, and is inspired by the bustling sounds of New York City street music. Read Julia’s interview with BNO ahead of the concert.

Colin will then assume the role of soloist/director in Louis Andriessen Tapdance Concerto - another work which was written for Colin, and premiered by him in 2014.

Listen to the livestream of the concert on 15 January at 8pm CET.

Behind the scenes recording Steve Reich

© Andy Doe

Back in August this year, Colin and the Colin Currie Group ventured to Kings Place, London, to record all of Steve Reich's Sextets: Sextet, Double Sextet, Six Marimbas and Dance Patterns, following a successful kickstarter campaign.

The recording marks the first time Reich’s sextet works have been brought together on a single album, released to celebrate the composer’s 90th birthday in 2026, and coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the Colin Currie Group.

““The Colin Currie Group continues to give outstanding
performances and make great recordings of more
and more of my music. Colin himself not only performs
but frequently conducts my larger scale works.
This recording of ‘The Sextets’ presents four pieces
that are all for different combinations of instruments that
create different kinds of music – compare Six Marimbas
to Double Sextet for instance. What is common here
is an absolutely top level of performance.””
— Steve Reich, September 2025

Steve Reich: The Sextets releases 10 April 2026 on Colin Currie Records.