Best of Fall 2012: Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt and R. Murray Schafer kick off Soundstreams’ 30th anniversary season

STEVE REICH If Reich’s driving, repetitive music sounds familiar, that’s because it’s in the DNA of so much modern rock, dance and pop. His 2009 composition Mallet Quartet, which will be performed by long-time collaborators Nexus, is a return to the kinds of stripped-down and hypnotic patterns that made him famous. It’s also 15 minutes of pure, blissed-out beauty.

ARVO PÄRT The work of this Estonian composer comes from a deep and soulful place. His fans, which include Michael Stipe and Björk, speak of the deep spiritual stillness that he conjures. (It’s perfect headphone music.) Orient and Occident catches a darker side of Pärt, full of Eastern melodies clashing against Western harmonies before achieving a haunting synthesis.

R. MURRAY SCHAFER Since the 1960s, this eccentric Canadian composer has been writing his epic and still unfinished Patria cycle, which wrestles with ancient myths and sometimes entails camping in the woods—or using a snowmobile in the orchestra. The Love That Moves the Universe, which is getting its Toronto premiere, is full of his trademark extremes.