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Terry Riley

In C

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In C by Terry Riley - original recording - Part 1
n C - Terry Riley - Baylor Percussion Group
Terry Riley rare footage, live in the 70s
Terry Riley: Poppy Nogood (1969)
1 In C, for unspecified performers  

To celebrate the 45th anniversary of Terry Riley's collaborative music piece In C - a landmark work that gave birth to the minimalist movement in the 1960s - Sony Masterworks is releasing the first ever re-mastering of the original session master tapes. The re-mastering lends an enhanced clarity and transparency to the piece's joyful polyphony of overlapping musical motives.

  • This years Ojai Festival makes time for Terry Riley / SFCV
    Posted At: June 16, 2025
    SFCV's Richard S. Ginell writes……While the bulk of this year’s Ojai Music Festival was given over to Music Director Claire Chase’s mammoth Density 2036 project and female composers in general, a seminal contemporary figure nearly got lost in the shuffle. This would be Terry Riley, who will turn 90 on June 24 and miraculously remains a productive contributor to the new-music scene.Currently living in Japan, ...

  • Sasha Waltz matches Terry Riley's 'In C' with a minimalist community at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall / The Guardian
    Posted At: April 30, 2025
    ‘In C’ review from The Guardian………..The choreographer pairs the semi-improvised score with similarly loose structures that reflect on collective action and identity          Lyndsey Winship writes….Contemporary choreographers love minimalist music. Its rhythmic repetition, unceasing momentum and layering of phrases provides a useful framework for movement, as in Lucinda Childs’ Danc...

  • 'Shri Camel,' a first revisit on vinyl for Terry Riley's eastern-facing odyssey UNCUT
    Posted At: January 16, 2025
    UNCUT's Jon Dale writes….For a while there, across the late 1960s and the decade of the 1970s, Terry Riley became the friendly face of contemporary minimal composition. There he was, grinning amiably, superimposed over trees and sky on the cover of his best-known album, 1969’s A Rainbow In Curved Air, a countercultural goofball maverick with chops to spare, his music both spiraling in its hypnotic power, an...

  • Art collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto, Terry Riley, and others set for this Fall / Tokyo Art Beat
    Posted At: August 24, 2023
    Tokyo Art Beat writes…The second edition of an audiovisual art exhibition, “AMBIENT KYOTO 2023,” will be held from October 6 through December 24, 2023. Exhibitions by leading Japanese artists and musicians and live performances by Terry Riley.AMBIENT KYOTO is an innovative audiovisual art exhibition created in tandem with the traditions and wisdom of Kyoto. The first edition in 2022 featured the sound and l...

  • Zoe Conway leads trad. take on Terry Riley's In C / THE IRISH TIMES
    Posted At: June 6, 2023
    THE IRISH TIMES - Siobhán Long writes……Its sense of adventure has long set Louth Contemporary Music Society’s summer festival apart, and this year is no different: Folks’ Music is a two-day celebration of music by, for and about folk – some with dirt on their boots, as the programme declares.What promises to be the jewel in its crown next week is a sold-out performance of the mesmerising In C, which the Ame...

  • Terry & Gyan Riley headline first weekend at PDXJazzFestival - / Portland MERCURY
    Posted At: February 24, 2020

    With the 2020 PDX Jazz Festival in full swing, our indefatigable copy chief Robert Ham has been busy catching some of the 100+ events happening during this annual event and filed this report from the first full weekend of the fest. How often have Terry Riley and his son Gyan shared warm, almost secretive glances at one another throughout their lives? On stage, their visual check-ins were meant as sma...

  • Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson, and John Zorn hit it off at the chapel on Valencia Street / San Francisco Classical Voice
    Posted At: May 22, 2019

    Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson, and John Zorn - three towering figures in U.S. experimentalism - don't immediately spark an association among them. Before their latest two-night, four-shows residency of a sort at the Chapel on Valencia Street. they had collaborated exactly once, coming together on the occasion of Zorn's 65th-birthday celebrations at the same venue in September 2018. The trio hit it off, an...

  • The history of the loop pedal / Red Bull
    Posted At: March 28, 2019

    From Terry Riley to Ed Sheeran, via Robert Fripp, KT Tunstall, Andrew Bird and Tune-Yards, this is how the loop pedal has transformed the image of the one-person band. The one-person band has existed for several centuries. A harmonica at the mouth, an accordion at the waist, bells around the ankles, drums at the feet – that's the traditional picture conjured up when we think of the lone perform...

  • St. Paul Chamber Orchestra opens its 60th season with Terry Riley's 'In C' / Minneapolis Star Tribune
    Posted At: September 9, 2018

    There aren't too many classical concerts where you find a member of the orchestra's woodwind section sitting a couple of seats away from you, playing his instrument. That is what happened on Friday evening at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra opened its 60th anniversary season with a performance of the American composer Terry Riley's "In C." "In ...

  • I CARE IF YOU LISTEN has 5 Q&A's with 'UnCaged Toy Piano Festival' founder/director Phyllis Chen
    Posted At: November 30, 2017

    Phyllis Chen is a pianist, toy pianist, composer, educator, curator, and founder/director of the UnCaged Toy Piano Festival. Chen founded UnCaged Toy Piano in 2007 to encourage new music for the instrument, and since its inception, she has received over 200 new toy piano pieces from composers around the globe. Now in its ninth season, UnCaged Toy Piano 2017 takes place on December 8-14 and has joined for...

  • Terry and Gyan Riley - Colisee Desjardins performance was loose and joyous / exclaim!*@# review
    Posted At: May 22, 2017

    Terry Riley is one of the greatest composers of the last 100 years. His style is often called Minimalism, but earlier today (May 20), while watching some Bruce Connors films that used Riley's music as their scores, I was struck by how weak a description that is. His compositions are active, living organisms that are often teeming with notes, melodies and harmonics. Often they have structures based on...

  • Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air' makes SF Weekly's 'Top 7 Songs For Daydreamers'
    Posted At: January 13, 2017

    This psychedelic 18-minute masterpiece from Terry Riley, a pioneer of classical minimalism, goes perfectly with its track art. Think pastel colors, rainbows, and soft, fluffy clouds when listening to this fantastical ditty from the late 1960s. California Composer Terry Riley launched what is now known as the Minimalist movement with his revolutionary classic IN C in 1964. This seminal work ...

  • Terry Riley begins residency at MOCA / Los Angeles Times
    Posted At: January 8, 2017

    When Philippe Vergne became the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014, he said he considered performance as "essential" to MOCA's mission as it had originally been, before losing currency under other directors. Vergne also insisted he would not be rushed in any of his plans for the museum, taking whatever time he needed to do it right. Nearly three years later, he has begun ...

  • Terry Riley live at London Barbican / THE LINE OF BEST FIT
    Posted At: September 29, 2016

    Minimalism is a genre that gets a bad rap, sometimes unfairly. In the public imagination, if a stereotype of a minimalist composition exists at all, it is of a man sitting at a piano, pressing the same white key ad infinitum until everyone involved loses their will to live; or at best, John Cage's four minutes, thirty-three seconds of silence. The kind of stuff your Status Quo-loving uncle would dism...

  • Moments of transcendence came and went in LCO - Terry Riley performance / Evening Standard review
    Posted At: September 26, 2016

    The London Contemporary Orchestra with Terry Riley on piano and Gyan on guitar came armed with bassoon, double bass, chamber organ, a drummer, two percussionists and three vocalists, with each musician using instinct to guide them forward. The second half was the thing: Riley's groundbreaking work In C, a modern masterpiece that starts with a throbbing C note and builds into a trance-like, shapeshif...

  • Terry Riley's In C featured at BBC Music Day / Classical-Music.com
    Posted At: June 6, 2016

    Last Friday Bristol became one of the main locations of the second annual BBC Music Day, with a wide range of celebratory events, including choral singing on the Severn Bridge, Aardman Animations's Shaun the Sheep conducting at the Colston Hall, and a live edition of Radio 3's In Tune. One of the highlights was a spectacular evening concert, featuring Charles Hazlewood's British Paraorchestra. Th...

  • Terry Riley Festival@National Sawdust / Brooklyn Vegan
    Posted At: October 6, 2015

    The Terry Riley Festival is currently underway at new Williamsburg venue National Sawdust. Sunday night (10/4) saw three events, the last of which featured Terry Riley's Abbeyozzud and Beyond series of works with son Gyan Riley, Zach Brock (violin), David Cossin (percussion), Travis Laplante (saxophone), Matmos (electronics), and Evan Ziporyn (saxophone). They performed Thanks Isn't Enough, Poppy...

  • The genius of Terry Riley / UNCUT
    Posted At: July 21, 2015

    I tend to write about eight or nine albums in each issue of Uncut, and barely a month goes by without me dropping the name of Terry Riley into at least one review. Clearly this is down to my personal taste, and also the fact that Bitchin Bajas seem to release something most months. Nevertheless, Riley's rippling, delay-and-drone, improvised take on minimalism seems to be having an elongated moment of inf...

  • Q&A: Terry Riley at 80 / KQED
    Posted At: July 3, 2015

    Terry Riley is one of the world's most legendary living composers. His 1964 work In C is widely revered as a foundational text of the musical form eventually known as minimalism - where very short repeated phrases gradually morph into different musical shapes, often to mesmerizing effect. In 1970, Riley became a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, the famed North Indian classical music vocalist, and immers...

  • Kronos Quartet celebrates Terry Riley's 80th birthday@SFJAZZ / examiner.com
    Posted At: June 28, 2015

    Last night at the SFJAZZ Center, the Terry Riley Festival, presented by the Kronos Quartet (violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Sunny Yang), began with the first of its three concerts. The title of the program was Happy 80th Birthday Terry! and the program was divided between Riley's own music and pieces written in his honor. Kronos performed all sele...

  • Minimalism Goes Big@SFJAZZ Center for Terry Riley's 80th Birthday / SF Weekly
    Posted At: June 25, 2015

    Fantastically (and ironically), composer/performer Terry Riley's 80th birthday fete - a celebration of the musician often recognized as the "Father of Minimalism" - is a three-day, monumental extravaganza. San Francisco-based, Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association, will host the birthday bash, at SFJAZZ Center June 26-28. The festivities include a selection of Riley'...

  • Happy 80th Birthday Terry Riley - APM: Composers Datebook
    Posted At: June 24, 2015

    American Public Media's Composers Datebook is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present-with appropriate and accessible music related to each. A Californian, born on this date in 1935, is Colfa...

  • 'The Most Beautiful Offerings' - Terry Riley At 80 / NPR
    Posted At: June 20, 2015

    Composer Terry Riley turns 80 Wednesday. He's been called the father of minimalism for his groundbreaking 1964 work In C. But his influence has spread far beyond, sparking the imaginations of many artists, from cutting-edge electronic musicians to rock gods. Riley's musical footprints have been followed by generations of musicians. Compare his A Rainbow in Curved Air, for example, with The Wh...

  • Roiling 80th birthday tribute to Terry Riley@MIT / Boston Globe
    Posted At: April 21, 2015

    At Boston's MIT, a welcome and ambitious new series called Sounding, curated by composer Evan Ziporyn, has bookended its inaugural season with celebrations of two icons of American experimental music, beginning with a program devoted to Alvin Lucier and culminating on Saturday night with a roiling and joyful 80th birthday tribute to minimalist pioneer Terry Riley. Back in 1964, Riley's "In C" rec...

  • Terry Riley marathon birthday event@MIT / The Boston Music Intellegencer
    Posted At: April 20, 2015

    A marathon event, Terry Riley's 80th Birthday, ran well over three hours Saturday night at MIT's overly warm Kresge Auditorium. That Terry Riley was the featured artist would be a bit of an exaggeration, as the master instigator of minimalism did more comping than weaving his brand of melodic modalities. Other oddities were billing four improvisations as "world premieres" and a re-performanc...

  • In honor of his 80th Birthday - UK Performance of Terry Riley - IN C
    Posted At: April 10, 2015

    In celebration of Terry Riley's 80th Birthday, Lost Property presents a performance of his   IN C,   along with lesser known Riley pieces and new compositions inspired by him. The Saturday June 27th date will be at 'One Church, Gloucester Place, Brighton UK.' The program will include In C – Adam Bushel will lead a 25 piece ensemble to perform this minimalist classic. Written i...

  • Africa Express presents Terry Riley?s 'In C Mali'
    Posted At: November 29, 2014

    Earlier this month, Africa Express announced plans to release a new LP in the form of an extensive, forty-minute-plus version of ‘Terry Riley's In C', re-dubbed ‘Terry Riley's In C Mali'. In advance of the release, a special performance at London's Tate Modern took place to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the legendary piece of minimalism.  Led by conductor Andr&...

  • Raleigh improvisers to revisit Terry Riley's In C / Indy Week
    Posted At: October 29, 2014

    With a little effort, the ambient can become the active. Think of the sounds in the world around you, the sort that fill those easy-listening nature soundtracks-a crackling campfire, waves washing onto the beach, a bustling café, an all-day rain broken by occasional thunder. They can serve as immersive mood music, sure, but if you listen closely, you may begin to register the slightest differences...

  • Phoenix AZ's 10 hour Oh My God! My Body! My Ears! concert@The Trunk Space featured: Terry Riley's 'In C'
    Posted At: February 17, 2014

    Listeners were treated to 10 hours of new music last Saturday February 15, at the first Oh My God! My Body! My Ears! concert at the Trunk Space in Phoenix AZ. Organized by composer and flutist Elizabeth Kennedy Bayer, the event included experimental or avant-garde contemporary classical music, with names like electroacousticimprovisation or drone, and brought over a dozen musicians from Ar...

  • The String Orchestra of Brooklyn performs Terry Riley's: 'In C' / TONIGHT!! @Ft. Greene Park, Brooklyn
    Posted At: September 21, 2013

    Making up their rained out July concert, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn is hosting an open invite performance of Terry Riley's minimalist classic In C  TONIGHT!! Saturday September 21 @6pm in Ft. Greene Park, Brooklyn NY. Organizers say that they want to fill the park with as many musicians as possible, regardless of their skill level: amateurs, professionals, groups are all welcome. Email inc...

  • Sony Masterworks releases first ever re-mastering of Terry Riley's: In C celebrating the 45th anniversary of the collaborative piece
    Posted At: April 20, 2009

    To celebrate the 45th anniversary of Terry Riley's collaborative music piece In C - a landmark work that gave birth to the minimalist movement in the 1960s - Sony Masterworks is releasing the first ever re-mastering of the original session master tapes. The re-mastering lends an enhanced clarity and transparency to the piece's joyful polyphony of overlapping musical motives. ...
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