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Terry Riley (b. 1935) Terry Riley Main Page
Various Tracks Voice, Synthesizer – Terry Riley Terry Riley's composition In C in its first performance in 1964 revolutionized an art form, pioneering the practice of gradual process in Western music. John Rockwell of the New York Times listed it as one of the ten most important compositions of the past two decades. Riley has since carried his ideas about the beauty of melodic development through repetition and slow change into the realm of improvisation. His music, layered and rich, gives the feeling of an entire wind ensemble; its softly twisting, melodic lines weave through space with a style that has been compared to Eastern music. Riley has, in fact, been a devoted student of North Indian master vocalist Pandit Pran Nath since 1970, appearing with him in numerous concerts both on tabla and as a vocal accompanist. As a soloist, he has appeared in many concerts throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and India and has become recognized as one of the leading forces in contemporary World Music. He is best known through his recordings for Columbia Masterworks, In C, Rainbow in Curved Air, and Shri Camel, as well as his recordings for European labels. The Ethereal Time Shadow: "In 1980, while teaching at Mills, I received a John Simon Guggenheim grant to make a setting for some of the ecstatic, devotional poems that appear in the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna Parmahansa, the great Bengali saint who lived in the latter part of the 19th century at Dakshineschwar, a marvelous temple complex on the banks of the sacred Ganges river near Calcutta. These poems were sung as Bhajans (devotional songs) by him and his many devotees and musician friends, who would congregate at the temple from time to time. I have never heard these particular Bhajans sung in Bengali with their original melodies, but I was struck by the spiritual power of their words even in the English translations. I felt a desire to recreate a setting for these poems and worked on three of them in their English translations: 1) O When Will Dawn That Blessed Day, 2) Remember This, Oh Mind, and 3) O Mother Make Me Mad With Thy Love. I treated both the wording and musical form . in quite an improvised manner, while giving the sections a definite formal outline. This is in no way a new raga, but is rather a raga-inspired form which arose naturally, with its particular pitch emphasis caused by the sets of just-tuned intervals I designed for this composition on two Prophet V synthesizers. Of the two synthesizers, one is playing a quite long sequenced program, while the other is used as a solo instrument with extensive utilization of the pitch bend wheel to mix notes and shadow the vocal line." (Terry Riley)  From Music From Mills (1986)
World Ear Project: Bullfrogs at Terry Riley's House (June 11, 1983)
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