Clink. Clink. Minimal. Music. Good.

I can always hear the music school hard at work through the open windows of Stoeckel Hall as I walk down College Street. Sometimes it is a soprano singing insanely high, sometimes an oboe drifting over its scales. I often pause to listen to the unseen musicians, smiling to myself or envying their expertise. But I had never heard any more than a measure or two of their work while on my daily walk—until last night that is, when I found myself in the back row of the Morse Recital Hall, taking in the latest concert in the Yale School of Music's New Music New Haven series. Steve Reich was the evening's guest composer.

LAURIE RANDELL/YH Three shrieking women and a bunch of xylophones? Just like home, minus all the weird sex.

Reich's famous percussion-powered compositions have always found a place somewhere in my consciousness. I vaguely remember my parents playing his music on weekend afternoons, and I'm sure I choreographed ridiculous dances to his melodies as a child. Last night, those memories attacked me, as Reich and his students attacked the audience with their music.

They performed four pieces, each simply named: "Music for Pieces of Wood," "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ," "Drumming Part I," and "Sextet," for two pianos and percussion. Simply named, perhaps, but not simply arranged. "Music for Pieces of Wood," was actually little more than five men hitting variously pitched wooden blocks together in an intricate pattern of rhythms. The piece began with one man, playing a constant, unwavering rhythm. He was then joined by a second man, whose down-beat rhythm complemented the rhythm of the first. As the third, fourth, and fifth men joined in, however, each new rhythm guided and interrupted the patterns of the old ones before falling in time with the original beat. In something of a prattling dialogue, the five played the droll scene well, at all times conscious that they were just tapping two pieces of wood together.

"Drumming Part I" was similarly basic, with four men beating out rhythms on a small set of drums. The lead percussionist began a rhythm that the others then absorbed, in effect passing the beat on as if by way of an assembly line. The pattern repeated throughout the piece, gaining speed with each rhythmic change. Before I knew it, their mallets flew so fast that I could hardly distinguish one from the other.

While "Music for Pieces of Wood" and "Drumming Part I" were simple, "Sextet" was driven by electronic keyboards, booming mallet instruments, and the murmurs of violin bows as the percussionists drew them across the keys of their xylophones. But nothing compared to the explosiveness of "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ." This piece was Reich and the Yale School of Music at their best. An orderly flood of melodies carefully layered together to create a full, rich sound, the piece still managed to retain a meditative feel, as the rhythms and riffs repeated themselves within the context of the piece as a whole. Seasoned with haunting female voices whose whispers echoed throughout, the piece felt dream-like, as if it had originated from a place far away. Sometimes, certain parts became more prominent, if only briefly, but perhaps that was just my imaginative ear trying to understand the units of the complex arrangement.

This piece was of the category of music that makes good movies great, the kind of music that evokes memories, even upon hearing it for the first time. It was the kind of music that I can only attempt—and probably pathetically, at that—to describe in words. It could be called resonant, immediate, commanding, mesmerizing, or any one of a number of adjectives. But I think it was better explained by the images it evoked in the minds of its listeners, images I had to jot down, in case I forgot them when the music stopped.

Similarly modern and beautiful pieces by Marcus Maroney and John Kaefer were also included in the show, but it was clear that most of the audience had come for Reich—and well they should have. Reich's body of work is an eclectic minimalist amalgam of Western classical music, African and East Asian percussion, and Hebrew chant, if we can even force it into words. I mostly have pictures of a dozen musicians pounding away on their keyboards and drums, a captive audience that had probably forgotten just how cool percussion can be, and the story that Reich's rhythms told.

Reich himself watched the concert from the balcony of the Morse Recital Hall. He wore a black baseball cap, a black sport coat, and glasses. At the end, he took a modest bow with his very talented musicians. It seemed that he, like his appreciative audience, had liked what he heard.

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