The Birth of Minimalism- Essay series

Key artists: Terry Riley · Steve Reich · Philip Glass · Arvo Pärt · Gavin Bryars

The Polygon Portal Essay Series is a programme of curated immersive listening sessions, pairing themed playlists with companion essays that set the music in its cultural, technological, political and historical context. The sessions are built on the notion that knowing the world behind a record changes what you feel when you hear it. Each essay is presented in 360° spatial audio designed to put audiences inside the music, and experience art in new ways.

In 1964, Terry Riley handed musicians fifty-three melodic fragments and told them to repeat. What followed was a movement.

Riley built the grid. Reich found the third rhythm that lived between two players. Pärt stripped everything back until only what he trusted remained. Bryars built a cathedral around one unnamed man’s voice, and let it fall quiet again.

At Polygon Portal, curated and produced by Omni Soundlab, the founding documents of minimalism are reimagined on one of the world’s best spatial audio systems. Repetition as revelation, played the way it was meant to be felt.