Terry Riley: “A musician whose genius exceeds musical boundaries”

Friday night, we were blessed to see a great concert.  A true pioneer who is 84 years young and his son illuminated our minds not only musically but philosophically as well.

Terry Riley on piano, melodica and keyboard, acclaimed by many as the true founder of minimalist music, together with his son Gyan on electric guitar built us a universe of sounds with structures from jazz, western art and Indian music (maybe even a piece with a Middle eastern maqam too).

Terry & Gyan Riley on stage

He has been a creative figure since the 60s and has influenced many artists including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Le Monte Young and Michael Nyman to name a few. The famous Who song “Baba O’Riley” is derived from the combination of the song's philosophical and musical influences, Meher Baba (Indian Guru) and Terry Riley.

He is a multi-instrumentalist playing the piano, saxophone and Indian musical instruments. He has spent years in India as a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath (master of Indian classical singing).

The main characteristics of his works are heavy usage of innovative repetitions, tape music techniques and usage of electronics although he mostly preferred the piano during this concert.

Riley's famous overdubbed electronic album “A Rainbow in Curved Air” (recorded 1968) inspired many later developments in electronic music. You can listen to the full album on the below video.

As for this concert, father and son made a great duo and they combined a fluid exchange between improvisation and composition, between aspects of jazz, Eastern music  and classical structure. Their chemistry during the concert was amazing and one could easily witness the true art of non-verbal communication between real talented musicians.

With this performance we were taken into a different dimension listening to them and watched amazing examples of musical gentleness and  modesty within a duo.

We very much enjoyed a journey into the world of Rileys and just believed the wisdom of the beard.

An excerpt from the concert

If you are further interested in Terry Riley's earlier works I would definitely suggest you to listen to his masterpiece "In C". His 1964 composition is one of the masterpieces of the minimalist music genre and has been played and recorded by various musicians with many different forms and instruments.

"In C"

The first performance of “In C” was given by Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnick. Its form was an innovation: The piece consists of 53 separate modules of roughly one measure apiece, each containing a different musical pattern. 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. If you check out on YouTube you may find many different versions of "In C".

At the end of the concert we did not forget to pay our tributes to Terry and Gyan Riley and of course managed to get a signed copy of their latest CD.