The cover will be changed.

The minimalist composer Steve Reich has responded to criticism about the cover of his forthcoming album, WTC 9/11, which had a documentary photograph of a plane flying toward the towers. In an earlier announcement, Mr. Reich's label Nonesuch wrote, "The album marks the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, which is the subject of Reich’s piece and, accordingly, its cover, which features an indelible image of the attacks captured by photographer Masatomo Kuriya. WTC 9/11 is scored for three string quartets, all performed here by Kronos Quartet, and pre-recorded voices." The comments appended to the original announcement called the album cover "vile" and "terrible" and some encouraged a recall.

Mr. Reich has now posted a letter on the Nonesuch website announcing that the cover will change after public outcry:

As a composer I want people to listen to my music without something distracting them. The present cover of WTC 9/11 will, for many, act as a distraction from listening and so, with the gracious agreement of Nonesuch, the cover is being changed.

When the cover was being designed, I believed, as did all the staff at Nonesuch and the art director, that a piece of music with documentary material from an event would best be matched with a documentary photograph of that event. I felt that the photo suggested by our art director was very powerful, and Nonesuch backed me up. All of us felt that anyone seeing the cover would feel the same way.

When the cover was released on the Nonesuch site and elsewhere, there was, instead, an outpouring of controversy mostly by people who had never heard the music.

He continues to say that thus far reactions to the work have been "thoughtful and moving," in contrast to the attention paid to the cover. Mr. Reich lived only four blocks away from the World Trade Center in 2001, although he was away in Vermont when the attacks took place. “On 9/11 we were in Vermont, but our son, granddaughter, and daughter-in-law were all in our apartment," he has written. "Our phone connection stayed open for six hours and our next-door neighbors were finally able to drive north out of the city with their family and ours. For us, 9/11 was not a media event."

ewitt@observer.com

At the start, the 10 dancers (seven women, three men) seem more or less equal as they walk, jog, run, fall to the ground-hallmark movements of so much postmodern dance. In always-splintering groups of three or four or more, or on their own, they tilt to one side, straighten, then regroup, rushing to the front of the stage and back. Fumiyo Ikeda, the senior member of Rosas, seems for a while to be the One, but quickly she's one among many again; she's always distinguished, though, by a womanly lyric quality that stands out among the more hard-edged style of the others. Throughout the earlier segments of the dance, there's little bodily contact between dancers-they're inhabiting their own worlds even when they act in unison; they're like happy molecules bouncing around without colliding. Sometimes the boy molecules are on their own, the females watching from the sides; sometimes it's the boys who watch. Most of all, everyone moves -they leap, they fling themselves to the floor, they tumble, they jackknife, they dash offstage and back again. Rain is a triumph of the kinetic impulse.

Slowly, the lovely pink-gold lighting darkens; as the dancers go off, some of them return having exchanged their brown, beige, gray costumes for pink, cerise, rose. And the language of the choreography modifies from horseplay to more serious encounters-moments of anger, heads butting chests; mating moments. Now there are passages of chanting from singers behind the curtain, and outbursts of sound from the dancers. The dancers go behind the gold-rope curtain and burst through it toward the audience, then hurtle back. The lifts get more daring and dramatic, all in response to the darkening music. Finally, inevitably, the storm passes, the dancers resume their original costumes, the movement subsides in intensity and at last comes to a halt. It's been a 70-minute outpouring of exhilaration.

There's some kind of back story to Rain , we're told-it was inspired in part by an atmospheric novel by the New Zealand writer Kirsty Gunn. And De Keersmaeker has a good deal to say about Reich's music, about "the rival forces of Yin and Yang," about "dig[ging] deeper into duality: activity and non-activity, inspiration and expiration." Luckily, we can forget all that. Rain works wonderfully as pure choreography, like two other famous group works, Jerome Robbins' Dances at a Gathering (also 10 dancers) and Mark Morris' L'Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato . It may have a story to tell, but that story is dance.

A more modest but highly interesting event took place at the Joyce recently: George Piper Dances, so-called for the middle names of its two founders and directors, Michael (George) Nunn and William (Piper) Trevitt, both previously leading dancers with England's Royal Ballet. They presented three contemporary works, all very, very serious, alternating with jokey home movies of the two of them horsing around in L.A., London, New York-in hotel bathrooms, on buses, in the street. As Trevitt said in a Time Out interview, "People … could get the impression that we're always pissing about, but an actual fact is that the one thing we do take seriously is our craft. Our ultimate dedication is to dance. It's the rest of the time that we're stupid."

The company is small-five dancers, two of whom are women-and strong. They opened with William Forsythe's 1984 Steptext , in which, alas, a Bach chaconne for solo violin is abruptly and repeatedly interrupted by blasts of silence, so that it seems to be barking at you. Forsythe is ingenious, and presumably he could explain why he treats the music this way, but he's just not as interesting as Bach; his fragments of effective partnering and of macho contest aren't strong enough to justify this kind of manhandling of great music.

Mesmerics gave us the New York premiere of a Christopher Wheeldon ballet (to Philip Glass) that he's expanded from an earlier version seen in England. He's expanded it too far: This is a case in which a good deal less would have been a good deal more. Like his brilliant pieces to Ligeti for City Ballet and San Francisco, Mesmerics takes place in semi-darkness, much of it in slow, underwater motion, the dancers lying on the floor. Wheeldon's capacity for invention is large, and it doesn't fail him here-your attention is held. But you don't necessarily want dance to mesmerize you, at least not for an extended period of time, and when you begin with Philip Glass, you have no choice: It's hypnosis or nothing.

The most engaging part of the program was the New York premiere of Russell Maliphant's Torsion , an extended duet for Nunn and Trevor. ( Torsion was commissioned by The Place in London, and was sponsored by Luscious Chocolate.) We're back in the dark, with two big squares of light revealing the larger Trevitt and the smaller Nunn. Essentially, this is an exercise in males partnering each other, but without the slightest erotic content-these guys are interested in how it works, not in each other. There's a lot of arms swinging in their sockets, men twisting under each other's arms, lifting each other, holding each other upside down. It's consistently intelligent, honest and admirable, but after so much high-mindedness in the dark, I wouldn't have objected to a quick shot of, say, Gaîté Parisienne .

Instead, at the new, capacious and handsome Skirball Center at N.Y.U., we got a shot of Ballet Hispanico, which no one could call high-minded or unerotic. NightClub is a work in three parts-a tango section, set in a dance hall/brothel in Buenos Aires in the 1920's; a mambo-ish section, set in a Spanish Harlem social club in the 50's; and a hip-hop section, set in a contemporary club here in the city. There are three choreographers, but even though the tango part was made 15 years ago, the basic approach to dance is consistent: lots of projection, lots of color, and lifts, lifts, lifts.

In Buenos Aires, apparently, the first rule is that everyone smokes-by the end of Part I, the stage is carpeted with butts. The guys are in black and they're very macho and mano a mano . The whores wiggle their hips and strut. Eventually, couples pair off and retreat into the wings to complete their business arrangements, leaving the two leading men to tough it out over a blonde bombshell (the magnetic Sara Skogland), who manages to extract some tenderness from them. But then they go off, more interested in their male bonding than in her.

Life is hard in a Buenos Aires brothel-these gauchos are always pulling knives, cracking whips and treating the girls brutally, yanking them around by the hair, even sitting on them. The music is by Astor Piazzolla, played on the thrilling bandoneon . (Piazzolla hit New York like a hurricane back in 1985, when Tango Argentino turned up out of nowhere to wild acclaim.) We're 80 years away from the great exemplars of tango-Valentino in the movies and Carlos Gardel on records-and today this once-vibrant cultural expression comes across as stylized and cliché, in the same way that the Charleston does when it's trotted out to express the spirit of the 20's. Still, any tango is better than no tango.

The best part of NightClub is "Dejame Sonar," the Puerto Rican/Cuban section. A narrator tells us about his uncle who, in the 50's, leaves his fiancée back in the islands to come to New York and make it big. He doesn't-but he has a great time working and playing in a social club and dancing up a happy storm. Sara Skogland is back, as the "Sophisticate" who lures him away from the fiancée. What's appealing about this scene, though, isn't the story, but the wholesome, vigorous joy with which these boys and girls throw themselves into their sexy dancing, to the music of Tito Puente et al. You're caught up in their innocent pleasure.

If NightClub is, as it suggests, a history of recent Hispanic life through dance, it's a complicated progression-from the self-reflecting severity of the life of tango, through the uninhibited, good-natured life of the mid-century immigrants, to the narcissistic self-indulgences of today. An uptight stranger wanders into a club after hours and is stripped of his inhibitions as things go from merely sexy to orgiastic. (Boys kiss!) I wish the dance vocabulary were more drawn from today's club life, but there's less hip-hop here than conventional lounge dancing. Everyone goes for broke, though, starting with the manic D.J. (Rodney Hamilton). Pedro Ruiz is the Stranger, just as he's the central character in the first two scenes, and he has the stage presence to carry all three roles.

Ballet Hispanico is a mixture of ethnic, ballet, social, jazz-you name it, it's doing it. The company has been going strong for more than 20 years, and you can see why: It may not be refined, but it's full of beans.

In 1996, amid talk of girl power and waifdom, a tiny 18-year-oldsinger-songwriter-pianist named Fiona Apple made her debut with an album called Tidal . Although at first taken as a marketing team's capitalization on the Kate Moss moment, Ms. Apple soon revealed herself as a top-drawer popster; hit singles like "Criminal," which gave boy-girl relations a sexy jurisprudential spin, and "Sleep to Dream," with its wonderful pop adaptation of hip-hop rhythms, saw to that. But in no time, it seemed, Ms. Apple disappeared, heard from only on the Pleasantville soundtrack, where she delivered the Beatles' "Across the Universe" as a lucidly sensual art song.

Now she's back, with a fierce follow-up. Like so much about Ms. Apple, it looks fishy on paper–not least because the title, a rehearsal of Ms. Apple's own mantra, is 90 words long. Uncut, it reads: When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might so When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right .

Ms. Apple has not exactly expanded the scope of her interests; as on Tidal , these songs focus on romantic crises examined with a nearly morbid care. Ms. Apple, moreover, writes and sings in highly flown yet earthy ways, her alto seemingly caught inside a bluesy husk. Outbursts like "He don't give a shit about me" or "I'm full as a tick" pack a punch as calculated as they are effective. On When the Pawn , Ms. Apple more or less invents her own romantic fight game.

She and her producer, Jon Brion, whose work is dazzlingly fresh throughout the album, are in bravura control–from the musical arrangement to the dramatic delivery to the overall design and conception of Ms. Apple's 10-song suite.

Ms. Apple opens the album with "On the Bound," a midtempo piece in which she remains pessimistic and he–whose head she craves on her lap "one more time"–is all she needs. Mr. Brion orchestrates the tune with a Frankenstein lurch to the rhythms and a Carl Stalling lilt to the strange interpolations of levity that swing in. The song is not about Ms. Apple or her boyfriend, who you can't help thinking is a touch on the wolfish side; instead, it's a sonic explanation of the troubling world they think they inhabit. Next, the tempo speeds up, saws around, marginally brightens, as Ms. Apple asks for forgiveness for her "distance." A rhythmic and dynamic pressure point–an effective technique Ms. Apple and Mr. Brion repeat and refine in succeeding songs–occurs when, midsong, she takes off on the line "Now you have it, so baby tell me what's the word?" During such moments, no one in pop music seems to have more musical grip than Ms. Apple.

The record never stops. On "Love Ridden," as strings sting and caress, Ms. Apple observes that when she no longer calls someone baby, it can spell tragedy. On "Limp," personal rage unwinds exactly to thrilling rhythms. On "Fast as You Can," the music jumpcuts, and Ms. Apple, as her singing scats and deepens and then heightens again, earns the right to sing the words, "I'm blooming within." On "The Way Things Are," with a swayingly melodic chorus that could make it an enormous hit, Ms. Apple chooses to stay put: "So keep on calling me names," she sings, "keep on, keep on/ And I'll keep kicking the crap till it's gone."

Then there's "I Know," the most distinguished soul ballad in years. Calling herself a "crowbar," Ms. Apple offers: "And you can use my skin/ To bury your secrets in." She promises to wait by the backstage door. Then the album with the 90-word title ends.

–James Hunter

Sonic Youth's Millennial Boom

Sonic Youth–Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley–give this century a swell kiss-off with SYR 4: Goodbye 20th Century . The group, formed in 1981, really is this century's "last" rock band–rock as in "electric guitar." The Youth's howling, dissonant, distorted guitar music has always begun at the point where Jimi Hendrix's feedback left off. Strangely enough, this is the group's most "traditional" work yet–a two-CD set of "covers" of this century's most notorious modern composers, from John Cage to Steve Reich to–say it isn't true–Yoko Ono. Her 1961 composition, "Voice Piece for Soprano," is "sung" by Ms. Gordon and Mr. Moore's 5-year-old daughter Coco, who hollers her head off for 12 seconds.

Sonic Youth also tackle minimalism with Steve Reich's 1968 composition, "Pendulum Music." In a 1999 reprint of William Duckworth's collection of conversations with experimental composers, Talking Music , Mr. Reich denies he's a minimalist. He claims the M-word is "more pejorative than descriptive …" Pejorative or not, "Pendulum Music" is a sadistically minimal duet between rhythmic feedback and what sounds like a hurt dog yelping. In another minimal tune, or meditative, to use a favorite buzzword of composer Pauline Oliveros, is the Youth's rendition of her "Six for New Time." The "song" sounds like horses rhythmically clomping over a wash of electronic static while Mr. Moore whispers, "The queen approaches the throne," and a crescendo of feedback begins.

How can you not be tongue-in-cheek describing pieces that are simultaneously nonsensical and profound? This duality is most evident in works by two composers who are covered more than once, Christian Wolff (two pieces) and Mr. Cage (three). Mr. Wolff was a progeny of Cage's when the former was just a squirt in junior high. It's hard to tell their work apart. There are no melodies. Guitars noodle. Percussion is beaten or tapped. There's much curious electric bleating. Some chimes. Attempts at hip-hop scratching. The longest piece, Cage's half-hour-long "Four6" is long enough that the noises become narration. Why bother with blotter acid? Drop a tab of Cage instead!

How much of this music is Cage's versus Sonic Youth's? Is the band even following a score? In his book, Mr. Duckworth discusses "classical notation" with Cage as they go over a Cage piece called "Atlas Eclipticalis." "Sometimes [notation] works and sometimes it doesn't," Mr. Cage says.

Now, I've seen the score to "Atlas Eclipticalis." I've even playedit. Back in the mid-1970's, my high school band took part in a John Cage festival at the Cranbrook Academy of Art outside Detroit. As I remember, Cage's score instructed me to stand anywhere in the auditorium I wanted and periodically blat my trombone. The other 85 musicians had similar freedom. Gradually during the hourlong performance, all of us abandoned the score and wandered around playing whatever we wanted. Some majorettes even streaked (70's lingo for running buck naked) across the stage wearing John Cage masks. The composer himself was in the audience. Did Cage jump from his chair and cry, "This is not the piece I wrote!"? No.

He sat, laughing his head off. Maybe there was Eastern mystical significance to this composition. Maybe it was fraudulent. But I will remember how invigorating that Cage-inspired chaos was until my grave (or Y2K). A similar sublime experience is found listening to much of Goodbye 20th Century . Kronos Quartet, roll over! Sonic Youth has stolen your cultural mantle.

–David Bowman