Composer and Juilliard alumnus Steve Reich has been called the most original musical thinker of our time by The New Yorker, and hailed as America’s greatest living composer by The Village Voice. October 2006 was Reich’s 70th birthday, an occasion marked in concert halls and performance spaces around the world. Here are excerpts from the composer’s works spanning three decades, from a 5-CD compilation titled Steve Reich Phases: A Nonesuch Retrospective (Nonesuch 79962-2). We are grateful to Nonesuch for permission to use these sound clips.