Many of the later 20th-century composers in various modernist and minimalist styles came from outside of New York, such as John Cage from Los Angeles, though many studied, performed, or conducted in New York. John Corigliano, however, is a New York native who has worked exclusively in tonal idioms for most of his career. Steve Reich innovated a technique known as phasing, in which two musical activities are begun simultaneously and repeated, gradually drifting out of sync with each other in a natural evolution. Reich was also very interested in non-Western music, incorporating African rhythmic techniques in his compositions Drumming. Rhys Chatham as well as Glenn Branca blended the minimal music with modern rock esthetics and began writing microtonal pieces for large orchestras of guitarists but also wrote other classical pieces with non-amplified instruments. Kyle Gann is a musicologist as well as a composer of post modern pieces.
