May 2, 2011 – "Brevity is the soul of wit," Shakespeare's Polonius tells us — and brevity can also be a hallmark of genius. At New York's Carnegie Hall Saturday night, American composer Steve Reich celebrated his 75th birthday with four pieces in less than two hours, including intermission. The compositions, all written since 2007, were individually marvelous (one featured the National's Bryce Dessner and Wilco's Glenn Kotche) and collectively provided a terrific summing up of what Reich is all about. Reich uses elements of so-called world music (his early training was as a drummer at the University of Ghana) and popular forms like rock and jazz to create music that seems to thrive on repetition; many of his pieces are built on what he calls "pulses" which, once established, go in and out of phase with each other and with the instrumentation he uses as a rhythm section.