listen to complete piece

composer	Terry Riley (b. 1935)
performers	Musicians from the Bang on a Can Festival: Maya Beiser, cello David Cossin, glockenspiel, vibraphone Steve Gilewski, bass Scott Kuney, mandolin Michael Lowenstern, soprano saxophone Lisa Moore, piano Todd Reynolds, violin Mark Stewart, electric guitar Danny Tunick, chimes, marimba Wu Man, pipa Evan Ziporyn, clarinet
publisher	Ancient Word Music (BMI)
label	Cantaloupe Music 21004http://www.cantaloupemusic.com
duration	45:34

about the music

Riley's In C was perhaps the first widely known piece written in a style now called Minimalism. Influenced by La Monte Young's earlier experiments with long sustained tones and phrase repetitions, In C features 53 musical phrases, or modules, of varying lengths which are repeated freely by each musician over a constant pulse on the note C. Chance procedures are present in both the repetitions and the rests between them, both of which are independently determined by each performer. The overall musical result is a complex and unpredictable overlapping of canonic relationships, polyrhythms, and harmonic emphasis. Among the performers at the 1964 premiere at the San Francisco Tape Music Center (now Mills College) were composers Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, and Morton Subotnick.

Composer and performer Evan Ziporyn describes his conception for Bang on a Can's rendition of In C as "a performance rather than an activity." The musical freedom inherent in Riley's work is very rewarding for musicians, but can often be difficult for listeners to follow, especially when performed by a large ensemble:

"There's a way in which Riley conceived In C that doesn't give the patterns their due; when you've got all these people playing it, you can't hear the individual patterns, you can't concentrate on the details. I felt like we really needed to strip it down... I picked instruments that would give us some kind of 'world orchestra': [winds,] bowed strings, plucked strings, and pitched percussion. There's not too much timbral clutter, and you can hear the relationships between the instruments." (Ziporyn)

Ziporyn's conception was informed by his experiences performing In C and Steve's Reich's piece Music for 18 Musicians (Ziporyn: "a virtuoso In C for people who actually rehearsed"), as well as techno music.

about the composer		back to top

Terry Riley (b. 1935) was born in Colfax, California, and studied piano, theory, and composition at a number of schools including Shasta College, San Francisco State University, and San Francisco Conservatory. He later studied composition at the University of California at Berkeley with Seymour Shifrin and William Denny, and privately with Robert Erickson. However, his most significant teacher was the North Indian vocal master Pandit Pran Nath, with whom he studied and performed for 26 years until Nath's death in 1996.

While studying at Berkeley, Riley and composer La Monte Young together created Cage-inspired music for dance works by Ann Halbrin. Riley adapted one of these works into a concert piece entitled Mescalin Mix; in this and later works he experimented with tape loops, echo effects, and other musique concrète materials. For a couple of years starting in 1962, Riley lived in Europe, performing in piano bars and officers' clubs, attending Darmstadt summer courses, and producing a few tape-based pieces. He returned in 1964 to San Francisco (where In C was composed and premiered), then shortly moved to New York, where he lived and continued to perform for five years.

Improvisation always featured prominently in Riley's piano playing, and in the early 1970's he began to incorporate similar elements into his music. Riley's continuing interest in Indian classical music gained him teaching positions at Mills College in Oakland, California (1971-1981), and the Christi Sabri School in New Delhi, India, where he has taught Indian music since 1993. Through his association with David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet, Riley has composed a dozen works for string quartet, as well as a concerto, The Sands (1991), commissioned by the Salzburg Festival.

Riley continues to perform as a pianist and vocalist, and often appears in concert with sitar player Krishna Bhatt, saxophonist George Brooks, and bassist Stefano Scodanibbio. In May of 2000, he performed a number of solo piano concerts at the Sergei Kuryokin Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Moscow Conservatory. Riley's works have been recorded on the Celestial Harmonies, Kuckuck, New Albion, Nonesuch, Sony, and Telarc labels.

related websites
http://www.terryriley.net

about the performers		back to top

The Bang on a Can Festival was founded in New York in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. Since then they have presented more than 150 wide-ranging musical events in New York City, including a tribute to Morton Feldman, performances of Harry Partch's music on original instruments, the commissioning and premiere of Bun-Ching Lam's Child God (an opera accompanied by the Yueh Lun Shadow Puppet Theater), a "comic book opera" based on the cartoons and libretto of comic book artist Ben Katchor, and twelve Bang on a Can Festival Marathons. They have founded an internationally-touring chamber ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and an orchestra, the SPIT Orchestra. The founders recently took part in a groundbreaking collaborative project entitled Lost Objects, commissioned by the Dresden Music Festival for Concerto Cologne, Ries Kammerchor, and La Fura del Baos. Having made seven recordings for the CRI, Nonesuch, Point Music, and Sony Classical labels, Bang on a Can has recently started its own record label, Cantaloupe Records.

related websites
http://www.bangonacan.org