"The thing is, if you hang around long enough, you tend to get something done," legendary composer Steve Reich humbly asserted backstage at the Barbican last night.  

Spread across ten packed days and over thirty shows as part of the Phases – The Music of Steve Reich festival, none of his musical stones had been left unturned.

Long-heralded as one of the key pioneers of musical minimalism alongside John Cage and Phillip Glass, Reich’s compositions have since transcended the decades that they once defined.

At last night’s show, "The Cave" video-opera deftly married the ensemble to Beryl Korot’s filmed interviews with Israeli Jews, Palestinian Muslims and Americans about the sacred cave of Machpelah in Hebron.  Meanwhile DJ Spooky and the Kronos Quartet’s cover of "City Life" effortlessly outshone Coldcut’s glitchy, drawn-out take on "Music For 18 Musicians".  

But it was "Daniel (Variations)" – written for Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, who was executed by Islamic extremists while on assignment in Pakistan in 2002, that left the packed auditorium speechless and moved.     

"Daniel was a musician as well as a journalist," the 70-year-old composer said after receiving a ten minute standing ovation. "He played violin and loved bluegrass and jazz, so I guess that brought it closer to me.  The ‘Musician For 18 Musicians’ ensemble – for which this piece was commissioned, we added a second violin and voila to make it a full string quartet, to bring out Daniel’s words. I really wanted it to take off."