‘Variations’ honors slain Daniel Pearl

Composer Steve Reich does not expect his memorial piece for Daniel Pearl to stop what he calls the “medieval religious war” that claimed the reporter’s life. He just wants to keep Pearl’s name alive.

Reich, who turns 70 on Tuesday, was commissioned to write a piece for the Wall Street Journal reporter who was abducted in Pakistan in 2002. Claiming the American was an Israeli spy, his captors made a videotape as they killed him. “Daniel Variations,” scored for four singers accompanied by a small ensemble and using words Pearl spoke on the videotape, will have its world premiere at London’s Barbican Hall on Oct. 8.

Reich was deeply affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The opportunity to write a memorial piece for a fellow Jewish American, he said, was something “to get the juices flowing; this really was something that mattered to me.”