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Terry RailyComposer
Date of Birth: 24.06.1935
Country:  USA |
Content:
- Biography of Terry Riley
- Terry Riley has a son named Gyan, who is a guitarist.
- In C (1964)
- A Rainbow in Curved Air (1967)
Biography of Terry Riley
Terry Riley is an American composer and musician known for his contribution to the minimalist movement. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, Riley was born in Colfax, USA. He received his education at Shasta College, San Francisco State University, and the San Francisco Conservatory. He later earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Riley collaborated with Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, and Ramon Sender at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. However, his most significant influence came from Pandit Pran Nath, a master of classical Indian singing. During his studies with Pandit Pran Nath, Riley traveled extensively throughout India to learn to play the tabla, tambura, and master singing.
In the 1960s, Riley also traveled across Europe, working as a tap dancer. From 1971, he taught Indian classical music at Mills College, the California Institute of Arts, and in New Delhi. In 2007, Riley received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Chapman University.
Riley gained fame for his "all-night concerts" in the 1960s, where he performed improvisations from evening until dawn using an old harmonium and a vacuum cleaner connected to it to control the pedals. To take breaks during these marathon performances, he would play recorded saxophone fragments with a delay. These concerts were attended by families who brought folding chairs and sleeping bags. Riley credits John Cage and notable chamber ensembles like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, and Gil Evans for influencing his work, showcasing the combined influence of Eastern music, Western avant-garde, and jazz.
His longstanding collaboration with the Kronos Quartet began when Riley met the group's founder, David Harrington, at Mills College. Over his career, Riley has written 13 string quartets for the Kronos Quartet, among other works.
Riley composed his first orchestral piece, Jade Palace, in 1991 and has since written several commissioned orchestral works. Currently, he performs and teaches as a solo pianist and an Indian raga singer. In May 2011, he was invited by Animal Collective to perform at the "All Tomorrow's Parties" festival.
Terry Riley has a son named Gyan, who is a guitarist.
Musical StyleRiley's early compositions were influenced by Karlheinz Stockhausen, but after being introduced to La Monte Young's work, his style changed. "The String Quartet" (1960) was the first work in his new style, followed by a string trio where he first used cyclical short musical phrases. This composition is considered the first to incorporate repetitive short phrases as a technique of minimalism in notated music. In the 1950s, he worked with tape loops, then a new technology, and continued to use magnetic tape to create musical effects in both studio recordings and live performances. In his early tape piece "The Gift" (1963), Chet Baker's trumpet can be heard. He composed both pieces in just intonation and microtonal compositions.
In addition to collaborating with the Kronos Quartet, Terry Riley has worked with Rova Saxophone Quartet, Pauline Oliveros, and ARTE Quartett at various times.
His music and numerous ideas have influenced many other musicians, including John Adams, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Philip Glass, Mike Oldfield, Frederic Rzewski, Tangerine Dream, and The Who.
In C (1964)
Riley's music is characterized by improvisation with sequences of musical phrases of varying lengths. For example, the composition "In C" (1964), which originated from an idea Riley had on the way to work on a bus in San Francisco, consists of 53 individual parts or phrases, mostly equal to one measure, each with its own musical pattern, all played in the key of C.
One performer sets the tempo by continuously playing the note C on a piano keyboard. The other musicians, whose number and instruments are intentionally unspecified, play the aforementioned musical phrases, following only sparse instructions in the text. As the 53 phrases are played in succession, they overlap, merge, and echo throughout the performance.
"In C" was first performed by Steve Reich, John Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, and Morton Subotnick. Released in 1968 on the Columbia Records label, "In C" became the foundation on which minimalism in music was built.
A Rainbow in Curved Air (1967)
The renowned electronic album "A Rainbow in Curved Air" (recorded in 1967-1968, released in 1969) inspired many later works of electronic music. It influenced Pete Townshend's synthesizer parts in The Who's songs "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," which were dedicated to Terry Riley and Meher Baba. The album also influenced Mike Oldfield's composition "Tubular Bells" (1973).
Using overdubbing, Riley plays the electric organ, electric clavecin, darbuka, and tambourine in the title piece. The composition starts with minimalist drones and quickly develops into a captivating complex interplay of musical phrases and patterns. In the second piece on the album, "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band," Riley plays the soprano saxophone.
This album had a significant influence on the development of minimalistic music, ambient music, progressive rock, new age music, and preceded the electronic jazz fusion of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and others.
The title composition of the album is featured in the computer game Grand Theft Auto IV (on the radio station The Journey). Partial music from the album was also used in the radio adaptation of Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" on BBC Radio 4.
