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TERRY RILEY
California Composer Terry Riley launched what is now
known as the
Minimalist movement with his revolutionary classic IN C in
1964. This seminal work provided a new concept in musical form based on interlocking repetitive patterns. It's impact was to change the course of 20th Century music and it's influence has been heard in the works of
prominent composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams and
in the music of Rock Groups such as The Who, The Soft Machine, Tangerine
Dream, Curved Air and many others. Terry's hypnotic, multi-layered,
polymetric, brightly orchestrated eastern flavored improvisations and
compositions set the stage for the prevailing interest in a New
Tonality.
In 1970, Terry became a disciple of the revered North
Indian Raga Vocalist, Pandit Pran Nath and made the first of his
numerous trips to India to study with the Master. He appeared frequently
in concert with the legendary singer as tampura, tabla and vocal
accompanist over the next 26 years until Pran Naths passing in 1996.
While teaching at Mills College in Oakland in the 1970's he met David
Harrington, founder and leader of the Kronos Quartet that began the long
association that has so far produced 13 string quartets, a quintet,
Crows Rosary and a concerto for string quartet, The Sands which was the
Salzburg Festival's first ever new music commission and the 2003 SUN
RINGS, the multi media piece for choir, visuals and Space sounds,
commissioned by NASA. Most recently he has completed THE CUSP OF MAGIC,
for string quartet and pipa. Cadenza on the Night Plain was selected by
both Time and Newsweek as one of the 10 best Classical albums of the
year. The epic 5 quartet cycle, Salome Dances for Peace was selected as
the #1 Classical album of the year by USA Today and was nominated for a
Grammy.
Riley's innovative first orchestral piece Jade Palace was commissioned
by Carnegie Hall for the Centennial
 celebration 1990/91. It was
premiered there by Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony. June
Buddha's, for Chorus and Orchestra, based on Jack Kerouac's Mexico City
Blues was commissioned by the Koussevitsky foundation in 1991. The Rova
Saxophone Quartet, the Arte saxophone quartet, Array Music, Zeitgeist,
the Steven Scott Bowed Piano Ensemble, The California E.A.R. unit,
Guitarist's David Tanenbaum, the Assad brothers. Cello Conjunto, the
Abel Steinberg-Winant Trio, Pianist Werner Bartschi and the Amati
Quartet are some of the performers and ensembles who have commissioned
and performed his works. From 1989 to1993 he formed and lead the
ensemble Khayal to perform works written for them. He subsequently
formed The Allstars and the Vigil Band. He regularly performs solo piano
concerts of his works from the past 30 years. He also appears in duo
concerts with Indian Sitarist Krishna Bhatt, Saxophonist George Brooks,
Gyan Riley and especially with virtuoso Italian bassist, Stefano
Scodanibbio. In 1992, he formed the small theater company, The
Travelling-Avantt-Gaard to perform the chamber opera The Saint Adolf
Ring based on the divinely mad drawings, poetry, writings and
mathematical calculations of Adolf Woelfli, an early 20th century Swiss
Artist who suffered from schizophrenia and created his entire output
over a 35 year span while confined in a mental institution. Terry is
currently at work on a set of 24 pieces for guitar and guitar ensemble
called The Book of Abbeyozzud and has recently completed a book of 5
pieces for piano, four hands. In 1999 he was commissioned by the Norwich
Festival to compose a new work, WHAT THE RIVER SAID, which toured
Britain with the UK based group, Sounds Bazaar featuring the great
drupad vocalist Amelia Cuni. Then followed a commission from the
Kanagawa Foundation in Yokohama to create an evening length work for
solo piano in micro tonal tuning. THE DREAM, which received simultaneous
premiers in Rome and in Yokohama performed by the composer.
 The new millennium began with a tour of a new band,
Terry Riley and the All Stars which included George Brooks, saxophones,
Tracy Silverman, Violin and 6 string Viola , Gyan Riley Guitar and
Stefano Scodanibbio, string Bass with the final concert launching the
first New Sounds Live concert of the 21st Century at Merkin Hall. BANANA
HUMBERTO 2000, a piano concerto, was written for and performed many
times by the composer with the Paul Dresher Ensemble. He is at work on a
new solo cello piece commissioned by legendary Artist Bruce Connor to be
performed by former Kronos Quartet cellist, Jean Jeanrenaud. Music
for a new staging of Michael McClures play, Josephine the Mouse Singer
was written for a run in February 2001 at San Francisco's SoMart
theater.
In 2004 Terry and Michael released their first collaborative album, I
LIKE YOUR EYES LIBERTY. In May of 2000, Terry made his first tour of
Russia with solo piano concerts at the Sergei Kuryokin Festival in Saint
Petersburg and at the Moscow Conservatory and the Dom, a privately run
contemporary music club. The review of these concerts in Izvestia
proclaimed "Terry Riley to be the greatest composer pianist since
Prokofieff.
Terry has scored 3 feature films and has made music for numerous short
films including those of Bruce Conner.
In 2003 his plans for the new TIME LAG ACCUMULATOR were realized and
constructed for the Festival of Lille. This 9 room mirrored structure
with multi time delays was modeled on the original TIME LAG ACCUMULATOR
assembled in 1968 for the Magic Theatre Show at the Nelson Atkins
Gallery in Kansas City. The new TLA will reside at the museum of
Contemporary Art in Lyon France. Riley was listed in the London Sunday
Times as "one of the 1000 makers of the 20th Century."
QUOTES
"Riley's performances are easier to experience than to explain. He is a musician of enormous sophistication and technical ability, a musician who finds the center of tones and enters into them in the genuine hope of discovering something essential about the lifting of our spirits,,, This is music derived from many parts of the globe and from different eras. It has the improvisatory flair, the rhythmic exhilaration and the melodic subtly of the music of India, which Riley has studied for decades. But it is also grounded in classical tradition and jazz, in the advanced keyboard techniques of Chopin, in the harmonic richness of the Impressionists, the ecstatic improvisations of Coltrane." -The Los Angeles Times
"(Riley) played the piano and sang for two hours, acting more like a musician in mid-career that a movable shrine set before Minimalist worshipers...¦Mr. Riley carries jazz improvisation into his own sophisticated world. Mr. Riley has the upper-body stillness one associates with true keyboard technique. His colors are gorgeous and precisely under control." -The New York Times
"Terry Riley, American composer, father of minimalism, is bemused. Last night, he'd perform a series of stunning improvised duos with Italian bassist Stefano Scodanibbio at Berlin's spanking new contemporary art museum, and despite no publicity whatever, the concert started late because the promoters were turning away scores of people, telling them there would be another concert the next night." -The Wall Street Journal
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