The concert on the occasion of Terry Riley’s 75th birthday: California Kirana.
[audio:terry riley – the philosopher’s hand.mp3|titles=Terry Riley-The Philosopher’s Hand] Terry Riley, born June 24, 1935, is an American composer associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music. Riley began his long-lasting association with the Kronos Quartet by meeting its founder, David Harrington, while at Mills.
Over the course of his career, Riley composed 13 string quartets for the ensemble, in addition to other works. He wrote his first orchestral piece, Jade Palace, in 1991, and has continued to pursue that avenue, with several commissioned orchestral compositions following. Riley is also currently performing and teaching both as an Indian raga vocalist and as a solo pianist.
His music is usually based on improvising through a series of modal figures of different lengths, such as in In C and the Keyboard Studies. In C (1964) is probably Riley’s best-known work and one that brought the minimalist music movement to prominence.
Terry Riley’s In C with 124 musicians (Excerpt)
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=vJSEcoeCgus
Its first performance was given by Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, and Morton Subotnick, among others, and it has influenced their work and that of many others, including John Adams, Roberto Carnevale, and Philip Glass. Its form was an innovation: the piece consists of 53 separate modules of roughly one measure apiece, each containing a different musical pattern but each, as the title implies, in the key of C.
One performer beats a steady pulse of Cs on the piano to keep tempo. The others, in any number and on any instrument, perform these musical modules following a few loose guidelines, with the different musical modules interlocking in various ways as time goes on.
Talvin Singh Matharu is a producer and composer and tabla player, known for creating an innovative fusion of classical Indian music and drum and bass. Singh is generally considered involved with an electronica sub genre called Asian Underground.
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TERRY RILEY / TALVIN SINGH / GEORGE BROOKS LIVE
HKW Royal | Haus der Kulturen der Welt | John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 | 10557 Berlin
Sunday, 24.10.2010 | 20:00 h
Enrty: 25 € / 30 € / 35 €
http://www.hkw.de | http://terryriley.net
Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt | Foto: Sabine Wenzel
