Bratislava, Prague, Paris, Seville, Mexico City and Amsterdam. On 11th October in Tokyo, days after his birthday, Reich is awarded the Praemium Imperiale, one of the most prestigious honours in the arts and music. There is the atmosphere of a harvest festival; that the composer, in the autumn of his career, is reaping what he has sown. Steve, flattered as he is, has no time for such frivolities. 'Daniel Variations' had been a hard slog and he wasn't completely sated by his projects. Ideas were flying around, ones he was struggling to realise, painting the picture of an artist tormented by his ambitions. "One thing I did want to do which popped in my mind was something that had been in the back of my head since 1973 which is...ever been to a movie where it has a freeze frame and everything just stops? What I wanted to do was to make a sync soundtrack of a freeze-frame. You got, 'It came from Bostonnnnnnnnnn' and that 'n' would just go on indefinitely then it would be doubled by violin, viola or cello. Then the next speaker would come in and his or her last syllable would be prolonged. That would add to the harmony and then you would add up these chords and connect people harmonically. So that was in my mind but I had no idea who's talking or what they were talking about. This went on for several months. A formal idea clear; a content idea absolutely vacant.