Terry Riley Press Clips - 6-2-09

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May 12, 2009 -

Legend has it that composer Terry Rileywas sittingon a bus in San Francisco when the idea came to him for one of the most important andinfluential pieces of music of the last half of the 20th century.Riley began composing

IN C

in May of 1964. The work had its premiere that November,and it is often credited as the launching pad for the minimalist movement.

IN C

influencedcountless musicians fromPhillip Glassand this year's Pulitzer Prize winner,Steve Reich, to such rock bands asThe Whoand Soft Machine.Carnegie Hall recently hosted a 45th-anniversary celebration of

IN C

featuring the likes of Glass,Kronos Quartetand Terry and Gyan Riley, the composer's son, in the ensemble.Composer Osvaldo Golijovwas also part of the group. Golijov has won his share of laurels— including Grammy awards and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant — and here'swhat he has to say about Terry Riley's most famous work:"The greatness of

IN C

is like the greatness of the

Rite of Spring

or

Demoiselles d'Avignon

by Picasso. These are the first pieces — No. 1 in history — and then constantly imitated,consciously, unconsciously, withthousands of spinoffs," Golijov says. "And yet, the original— both

IN C

and

Rite of Spring

— they are still superior to any imitators. So that issensational. How can somebody be so radical and then in one masterstroke include thefuture?"What

IN C

isn't really is a score. It's a single page of melodic phrases, or themes, or modules. Anyway, each performer plays the same 53 phrases, but there's no — well,maybe we should just let Terry Riley himself explain."

IN C

is made up of 53 modules and we progress from 1 to 53 as we're playing and eachplayer has to decide when he enters into the stream of the music and when he comes out.so the more people you have, of course, the more complex web you're going to build up,"Riley explains, sort of.

From Distant Echo to Pulsing Cacophony

At Carnegie Hall, the number of people performing

IN C

topped 60, so complex onlybegins to describe the music. Terry Riley describes it this way:"It's very much like if you're watching birds on a lake and they suddenly take flight and asthey move through the air they create different patterns and they regroup. For me,

IN C

isvery much a sonic image of that," Riley says.Gyan Riley says that listeningto the work and playing it as a member of the ensemble isn'treally that different. During the rehearsal for

IN C

Gyan Riley sat with his guitar directly infront of his father's keyboard and behind Kronos Quartet — with a table of homemadeinstruments and a Guzheng player to his left and a trio of didgeridoos to his right."There's so much spontaneity and complexity in it," says the younger Riley, "that it's somuch more important to just listen to all the other sounds happening around you and justbe a part of it."Golijov was part of the

IN C

ensemble at Carnegie Hall. Where the original recording of the work runs about 40 minutes and was met with some befuddlement by theestablishment, the 45th-anniversary presentation ran close to two hours and received astanding ovation that lasted over five minutes. That acceptance, Golijov says, suggeststhat time has finally caught up with the ideas Terry Riley was exploring back in 1964."

IN C

is a radical experiment but it's also so embracing and so joyous," Golijov says, "thatit also symbolizes what the spirit of California was at the time and how it really was in away at the center of our world at that time and how it propagates, howit reverberates up totoday and across the world."

An Influence Beyond Minimalism

Gyan Riley has been listening to

IN C

and other pieces by his father for his entire life. Hehas been playing in Terry Riley's ensembles, as well as composing his own music —mostly on the classical guitar — for the past decade."Growing up in a house that had his music being played by him or by someone else," saysGyan Riley, "rehearsing ensembles [like] Kronos [Quartet] — just having that in my earsfrom a small child I think is probably the biggest influence because that's the time whenyou're not even quite aware that something is influencing you."What becomes clear in listening to the Rileys is that they both thrive in the kind of

CLASSICAL »

Terry And Gyan Riley: Together IN C

By Jacob Ganz

Courtesy of Terry Riley

Father and son (Terry and Gyan Riley,respectively) celebrate the 45thanniversary of Terry Riley's minimalist piece IN C with a New York performance.

THE SOUND OF RILEYS

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"IN C, For Unspecified Performers"CD: Riley: In C (25th AnniversaryConcert)Artist: Terry RileyLabel: New AlbionReleased: 1995Your purchase helps support NPRProgramming.How?

[6 min 22 sec]

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"La Cigale (The Locust)"CD: Imaginational AnthemArtist: Various ArtistsLabel: Tompkins SquareReleased: 1969Your purchase helps support NPRProgramming.How?

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"Balama"CD: Gyan Riley: Food for theBearded

TERRY RILEY: IN C(EXCERPT: TERRY, VOCALS;GYAN, GUITAR)TERRY RILEY AND GYANRILEY: 'THE LOCUST' (GYAN,GUITAR; TERRY, PIANO)GYAN RILEY:'BALAMA' (GYAN RILEY,GUITAR)

Page 1of 2Terry And Gyan Riley: Together IN C : NPR Music5/14/2009http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104061137

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environment where unexpected developments are allowed to blossom into major themes. And that's thecase whether they're on a stage with 60 other musicians, or it's just the two of them."What I see with our duo work," says Riley the elder, "is this kind of intuitive collaboration where nobodyquite knows what's going to happen in the next moment and we influence each other by what kind of energies we're putting out."Gyan Riley says that growing up around his father's music helped prime him for that kind of off-the-cuff collaboration. Even in those moments where they're forced to wing it entirely, which happenedwhen theduo walked out onstage one night a few years ago to perform what was supposed to be a verytraditional through-composed piece."So what happened," Gyan Riley remembers, "is he forgot the music backstage for that piece. So we got onstage and [he] sort of motioned to me, 'Looks like I don't have my sheet music,' and then starts playing something I've never heard before and I thought, 'Oh,this is going to be interesting.' And it was. It was tons of fun and those are usually the best things that come out of [the duo], andsometimes they're accidents."Whether it's a psychic link, or shared musical DNA, or just the product of years of playing with and listening to each other, it's arelationship onstage that echoes the one off."We have complete trust in each other as far as what we're going to do musically," says Terry Riley. "And that's what really makes ithappen for me because you know the other person's gonna be there wherever you go."

Comments

Please note that all comments must adhere to the NPR.orgdiscussion rulesandterms of use. See also theCommunity FAQ. You must be logged in to leave a comment.Login|Register NPR reserves the right to read on the air and/or publish on its Web site or in any medium now known or unknown the e-mails and lettersthat we receive. We may edit them for clarity or brevity and identify authors by name and location. For additional information, pleaseconsult our Terms of Use.Gordon Sundberg (HerrVanNorden)wrote:Let’s celebrate the premier of Nogärd’s Clarinet Trio!According to Erling Kullberg, the world premier of Per Nogärd’s first major composition, the Trio, Opus 15 took place in October of 1956.Although the trio has been categorized as the beginning of his infinity series, it’s place in modern music history as the first expression of the minimalist aesthetic should be self-evident upon careful listening. I doubt that Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Daniel Lentz or Philip Glasswere aware of Nogärd’s work, but because the Clarinet Trio predates Terry Riley’s “In C" by nine years, in my opinion, Nogärd’s little-appreciated contribution to minimalism should be reassessed. It can be heard on a rare 1996 CD featuring the LIN Ensemble.Wednesday, May 13, 2009 1:14:51 AMRecommend (0) Report abuse

Artist: Gyan RileyLabel: New AlbionReleased: 2002iTunes » Your purchase helps support NPRProgramming.How?

Page 2of 2Terry And Gyan Riley: Together IN C : NPR Music5/14/2009http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104061137

SOURCE:

Dow Jones Newswires

HEADLINE:

WSJ(5/2) WEEKEND JOURNAL: Music: Listening To 'In C,' A 1960s IconSource WebsiteBy Greg Sandow Dow Jones & Company, Inc.(From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)New York −− The 1960s didn't do much for classical music in America, or at least they didn't change themajor

concert

halls. Musicians didn't grow long hair, and the same familiar masterworks went on beingplayed.But outside the mainstream, a classical−music counterculture did develop, and its own founding masterwork was a piece by

Terry Riley

called "

In C

," premiered in San Francisco (where else?), in 1964. This is musicthat seems to have the ideals of the '60s in its DNA.And that's because Mr. Riley didn't simply write everything down, and then ask musicians to play exactlywhat he wrote. Instead, he imagined a cooperative piece. Working quickly, flying on instinct, he wrote out 53short phrases, all more or less in the key of C.And that's all there is. Musicians −− any number of them, playing any instruments −− can join together and

perform

the piece. One taps out a quick, unending pulse (of course on C). The others play the 53 phrases, inorder, but at their own pace, repeating each phrase many times, if they like, completely on their own, thoughMr. Riley does suggest they stop sometimes, to hear what everybody else is doing. When everyone gets to theend, the piece is over.And the results? Just magical. All kinds of musicians have played this piece − − new music experts, Baroquemusic specialists, rock musicians, you name it. And they tend to sound delighted, as if they've foundsomething that brings out both their joie de vivre and their love of good, hard work.In each

performance

, the phrases combine in new and different ways, making sounds that no one could havepredicted. But the order of the phrases creates musical knots for the players to untie, when all at once afamiliar chord gets tangled by a new, emerging dissonance. Excitement sometimes mounts and everyone getslouder. Or else the music suddenly subsides and the sound grows quietly transparent.And last week there was a

performance

unlike any other. This was a

celebration

of the 45th anniversary if "

In C

," played by more than 70 people, at what might be classical music's most famous mainstream venue,Carnegie Hall. And what diversity filled the stage! Front and center were the four members of the KronosQuartet, whose first violinist, David Harrington, had organized the festivities. In the middle sat Mr. Riley,resplendent in his big white beard.Mixed among the performers were members of the Young People's Chorus of New York City, wearingclothes of many colors, the composers Philip Glass and Osvaldo Golijov, and an ensemble of koto playersfrom Japan. Scattered through them all were a few veterans of the 1964 premiere, and also of the lively firstrecording, made in 1968. (It's just been reissued on SONY/BMG, though the most joyful recorded versionmight be the one released in 2001 by the Bang on a Can All−Stars plus friends, on the Cantaloupe label.)At first I thought the pulse was heavy, and the texture muddled. I'd see people playing, but I couldn't hearthem. But then I simply listened to the sound, and stopped caring about how I thought "

In C

" should beorganized. The sound was large. It enveloped me. It moved as it if were a living being, shifting, changing,falling away to let me hear (just for instance) the piping of four recorders, played by the members of QuartetNew Generation, a recorder ensemble that specializes in challenging new repertoire.

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