Search

Home > Celestial Blood > Terry Riley gave the world minimalist music. At 90, he’s still performing
Podcast: Celestial Blood
Episode:

Terry Riley gave the world minimalist music. At 90, he’s still performing
Category: Arts
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2025-08-25 19:00:00
Description: American composer Terry Riley’s name isn’t well known, but he’s among the most influential composers of the 20th century. With the song “In C,” which The Library of Congress deemed a “stealth masterpiece,” Riley launched a new music movement called minimalism, which other composers like Phillip Glass and Steve Reich embraced. It also influenced artists across genres, including ambient, electronic, pop, and rock. Riley turned 90 years old in June. The Ford amphitheater will celebrate his birthday and music on Sunday, September 7 . Terry Riley’s son, Gyan Riley, will join The Bang on a Can All-Stars and other special guests to play “In C” and other songs. The Ford will host a concert on September 7 to celebrate Terry Riley. Courtesy of LA Phil. Gyan Riley tells KCRW that he heard “In C” many times before realizing what the song was, but the first time he paid attention to it was around age 16 or 17, when he was invited to be part of an anniversary performance in San Francisco. “I actually heard that it's performed somewhere in the world every day,” he notes. The song is widely beloved because it’s a humanist one, he says. “It's something that most people can identify with, and it's very accessible to performers. It doesn't require an extensive skill set, except for being able to have a basic command of an instrument, and be able to read … the 53 patterns that are on the score.” The idea for the song came during a work commute, which was then scribbled down quickly, Riley recalls his dad telling him. Terry Riley himself describes what happened in a documentary by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark: “I was playing ragtime piano in San Francisco, and I was riding to work on the bus. And I was a bit altered and really feeling good on the bus. And suddenly, ‘In C’ was like an epiphany. I heard bells ringing out of heaven. It was like I heard the music of ‘In C’ on the bus. So I played my shift and went home and wrote down what I could remember of it, and fleshed out the rest of it. But it was all done in one night. It's a kind of piece that hasn't happened to me ever before like that. It's like a gift. ‘Here, I'll play this for you. You can write it down, and be considered the composer.’ But I don't feel like I composed it. I heard it. It was being played for me.” Gyan Riley says the idea of music just coming to you is a good model for composition. He recalls his dad advising him to just write down what was playing in his head. The elder Riley counseled, “If you just write down what you're hearing, it'll be original because there's only one you.” Terry Riley was also a pioneer of tape looping in music, which he began experimenting with in the 1950s. Now, a lot of composers have gravitated to the way he used repetition, Gyan Riley says. “Myself included. If something sounds great, why not repeat it? You want to hear it again.” Terry Riley is known for creating minimalist music. Courtesy of LA Phil. For the past five years, Terry Riley has lived in Japan. He went there in late February 2020 as part of a project, then had to stay there during the COVID-19 shutdown. Then when he was allowed to leave, he didn’t want to, having fallen in love with the culture, people, and food, Gyan Riley says. Terry Riley’s life abroad includes composing, singing, drawing, painting, playing piano/synthesizers, and performing, Gyan Riley describes. The two will do a concert together in October in Japan. “Now, what he's actually insisting on is that we have zero plan about what we're going to play, no set list, just completely improvised concert. … The last few times we've played together has been like that. And it's super fun because it's something that he wouldn't have done in the 60s. … He was improvising within structures, there were compositions, there were themes and things that were always similar. And now what we're doing is just basically without any rules or preconceived notions.” Gyan Riley says that after collaborating with his dad for so long, he started to more spontaneously react to what he was hearing, which “turned out to be a great thing for the whole sound of the music.” He says, “There was so much more freedom. And I wasn't worrying about, oh, wrong notes or this or that. It was just reacting and experiencing it with him.”
Total Play: 0