For the past few weeks, Cambridge has been buzzing with the news of Steve Reich. The father of modern minimalist music not only came to Cambridge’s Corn Exchange on Tuesday to give a talk, but also later performed as part of a concert with the pre-eminent percussion ensemble, The Colin Currie Group.

And Cambridge had a reason to be excited. Reich’s visit formed a very small part of a trip to Britain that is really about the world premiere of his ballet, Multiverse, and the UK premiere of his latest work, Pulse.

Reich is now in his 80th year and his conversation with Currie offered a unique insight into the composer’s musical development, as well as the man behind the music.

Over the course of an hour, they talked through Reich’s progression from sampling and tape recording in the 1960s to his writing for more conventional instrumental groups, albeit still mirroring the gradual ‘phasing’ techniques that characterise his early work.

In the concert that followed, which also served as the opening event of this year’s Cambridge Music Festival, Reich offered the perfect illustration of this musical process.

‘Clapping Music’, performed by Currie and Reich himself, demonstrates phasing in its simplest form, with four hands clapping out the rhythms. ‘Music for Pieces of Wood’ then extends this out to five musical lines, while ‘Mallet Quartet’ introduces a harmonic element, written for two marimbas and two vibraphones.

The Currie Group are a truly exceptional ensemble and, by the time the lights came up for the interval, the audience was already deep in conversation about the group’s mesmerising focus and the almost trance-like effect of hearing Reich’s familiar music live.

The highlight of the evening was, however, Reich’s ‘Music for 18 Musicians’, a work that extends over an hour, combining his typically percussive sound-world with strings, clarinets and voices.

While Reich’s techniques had been thoughtfully set out in the first half, the wall of sound presented in this larger work, combined with the immediacy of a live performance, offered a hypnotic, occasionally overwhelming and truly unique musical experience.

At the start of his talk earlier that evening, Reich had said that there was nothing greater for a composer than to have their works performed. This may be true, but something makes me think that the standing ovation that swept the Corn Exchange on Tuesday evening, and rapturous applause that continued long after the composer had left the stage, might just go one step further.