Reich's concept of an assisted afterlife ascent is imbued with complication. Rather than represent the climb through the more musically obvious scales, Reich instead opts for hazier melodic motifs that rise, fall and seemingly go nowhere at all. It's the Reichian way, and the fivemovement Jacob's Ladder (2023) is all the better for it.

The similar line-up of performers suggests that they might sound the same, but that is not case. The more sensuously beautiful Jacob’s Ladder (shades of Music for 18 Instruments) contrasts restless activity in the instruments against voices that are slow-moving, as though outside time...The shorter Traveler’s Prayer, composed during the pandemic, is impressively darker and more pensive.

In both cases, the relationship between music and language, voice and text, remains central to Reich's creative outlook, whether sacred or secular, speech-based or sung.

The gentle vocal lines and placid instrumental textures from the Colin Currie Group in Traveler’s Prayer feel exactly right. It’s the least ‘Reich-like’ sound I’ve heard in any of his compositions...Jacob’s Ladder will be much more familiar territory to those who listen to lots of Reich. The rhythmic drive is there right from the start, with almost a nervousness about it, and remains present throughout - yet here too the vocal lines from Synergy Vocals project a sense of profound calm, this time overlaid on those pulsing patterns.

the two pieces are very different. Traveler’s Prayer, first performed in 2021, is meditative and static, floating, almost ritualised...Jacob’s Ladder, though, returns immediately to the propulsive, exuberant Reich...This buoyant music is joyously, inexhaustibly energetic; it’s hard to believe it was composed by a man who will be 90 next year.

Jacob’s Ladder from 2023 is the most rewarding, with the Old Testament dream of an angelic ladder between Earth and Heaven recreated in ladders of notes joyfully navigated over a constant pulse, with flute and vibraphone adding bright colouring...Traveler’s Prayer (2020) operates differently, with a tangle of overlapping vocal canons…It's certainly interesting, but I’d rather climb Jacob’s Ladder myself: music about something and nothing, happily rolled into one.