Terry Riley’s In C

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Музей и галереи современного искусства «ЭРАРТА», ул. 29-я Линия, 2, Санкт-Петербург

17 марта в 19:00

Copyright © reMusik.org

Unquestionably the founding work of minimalism in musical composition, Terry Riley‘s In C (1964) challenges the standards of imagination, intellect, and musical ingenuity to which “classical” music is held. Only one page of score in length, it contains neither specified instrumentation nor parts. Its fifty-three motives are compact, presented without any counterpoint or evident form. The composer gave only spare instructions and no tempo. And he assigned the work a title that’s laconic in the extreme. At the same moment of its composition, Elliott Carter was working on his Concerto for Piano, a work Stravinsky was to hail as a masterpiece. Having almost completed Laborinthus II, Luciano Berio would soon start the Sinfonia. Karlheinz Stockhausen had just finished Momente. In context of these other works, and of the myriad of compositional styles and trends which preceded them, In C stands the whole idea of musical “progress” on its head.

Saturday, 17 March 2012

ERARTA, the Museum and Galleries of Contemporary Art

Terry Riley — In C

Performers

Performers: Christina Vasileva, Nick Sedakova, Igor Botvin, Andrew Prokazin, Amulana Ochirova, MariamZemalindinova, Anton Glushkin, Marina Zemlyanitsyna, Kolyadin Hleb, Alexander Marchenko, Nikita Oaks, George Nefedov, Timothy Kiselev, Evgeny Limansky, Bulat Sultanov, Natalia Belenkova.

Director – Marina Golyakova

Anton Glushkin, Artistic Director

Terry Riley (*1935)

Composer and performer Terry Riley is one of the founders of music’s Minimalist movement. His early works, notably In C (1964), pioneered a form in Western music based on structured interlocking repetitive patterns. The influence of Riley’s hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric, brightly orchestrated Eastern-flavored improvisations and compositions is heard across the span of contemporary and popular music.

Performers who have commissioned and/or played his works include: Kronos Quartet, Rova Saxophone Quartet, ARTE Quartet, Array Music, Zeitgeist, Steven Scott Bowed Piano Ensemble, John Zorn, Sarah Cahill, California E.A.R. Unit, guitarist David Tanenbaum, drummer George Marsh, bassist Bill Douglass, the Assad brothers, cello octet Conjunto Ibérico, Crash Ensemble, Abel Steinberg-Winant Trio, pianists Werner Bartschi and Gloria Cheng, Calder Quartet, Arditti Quartet, Amati Quartet, Alter Ego, Sounds Bazaar, Paul Dresher, singer Amelia Cuni, Bang-on-a-Can All Stars, and guitarist Gyan Riley.

Born in Colfax, California, Riley studied at Shasta College, San Francisco State University, and the San Francisco Conservatory before earning an MA in composition at the University of California, Berkeley, studying with Seymour Shifrin and Robert Erickson. At UC Berkeley, he met La Monte Young; together they worked with the dancer Anna Halprin. During a sojourn to Europe 1962-64, he collaborated with members of the Fluxus group, playwright Ken Dewey, and trumpeter Chet Baker, and was involved in street theater and happenings. In 1965 he moved to New York and joined La Monte Young’s “Theater of Eternal Music.” 1967 was the year of his first all-night concert at the Philadelphia College of Art and he began a collaboration with visual artist Robert Benson. An influential teacher was Pandit Pran Nath, a master of Indian classical voice; Riley appeared in concert with him as tampura, tabla and vocal accompanist for over 25 years. Riley continues to perform in concerts of his music and of Indian classical music, as well as conducting raga-singing seminars. He also appears in concerts with Indian sitarist Krishna Bhatt, saxophonist George Brooks, guitarist Gyan Riley and with virtuoso Italian bassist, Stefano Scodanibbio.

Riley joined the Mills College faculty in 1971. There he met David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet. Their long association led to 13 string quartets, the concerto The Sands (1990), the multimedia choral work commissioned by NASA, Sun Rings (2003), and The Cusp of Magic (2004) with pipa. The Kronos recording of his epic five-quartet cycle, Salome Dances for Peace was selected as the Classical album of the year by “USA Today” and was nominated for a Grammy.