In this episode of The Way I See It, our radio collaboration with BBC, we’ve captured composer Steve Reich’s audible awe as he sees his friend Richard Serra’s monumental 2015 sculpture Equal for the first time. As Reich puts it, he and Serra are “in tune to the same frequencies,” so their meeting in Manhattan in the 1960s and subsequent friendship was both important and inevitable.

Working in sound and steel respectively, both Reich and Serra rejected traditional compositional structures—one of harmony and the other of form—to give shape to their work. Reich is the recipient of countless awards, including two Grammys, a Pulitzer, and, recently, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. His works are performed in concert halls all over the world, and recently at Glastonbury Festival.