Raised in Redding, California, Riley began studying composition and performing solo piano in the 1950s. He befriended and collaborated with composer La Monte Young, and later became involved with both the San Francisco Tape Music Center and Young's New York collective, the Theatre of Eternal Music. A three-record deal with CBS in the late 1960s brought his work to wider audiences. In 1970, he began intensive studies under Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath, whom he often accompanied in performance. He has collaborated frequently throughout his career, most extensively with chamber ensemble the Kronos Quartet and his son, guitarist Gyan Riley.[2]
Around 1980, Riley began his long-lasting association with the Kronos Quartet when he met their founder David Harrington while at Mills. Throughout his career, Riley composed 13 string quartets for the ensemble, in addition to other works. He wrote his first orchestral piece, Jade Palace, in 1991, and has continued to pursue that avenue, with several commissioned orchestral compositions following. He is also currently performing and teaching both as an Indian raga vocalist and as a solo pianist.
Riley continues to perform live, and was part of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in May 2011.[6]
Riley's music is usually based on improvising through a series of modal figures of different lengths. Works such as In C (1964) and the Keyboard Studies (1964–1966) demonstrate this technique. 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 but each, as the title implies, in the key of C.[7] 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.
In the 1950s Riley was already working with tape loops, a technology still in its infancy at the time; he would later, with the help of a sound engineer, create what he called a "time-lag accumulator".[8] He has continued manipulating tapes to musical effect, in the studio and in live performances throughout his career. An early tape loop piece titled Music for the Gift (1963) featured the trumpet playing of Chet Baker. It was during Riley's time in Paris, while composing this piece, that he conceived of and created the time-lag accumulator technique.[8] Premiered in 1968 in the Magic Theatre Exhibition at the Nelson Atkins Gallery in Kansas City,[9] a new version of the installation was commissioned three decades later by Lille 2004-European Capital of Culture and purchased by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon. A third version was built and presented by the Schauspielhaus in Bochum in 2019. He has composed using just intonation as well as microtones.[10] In New York City in the mid-1960s he played with his longtime friend La Monte Young, as well as with John Cale and tabla player Angus MacLise, who were founding members of The Velvet Underground. Riley is credited as inspiring Cale's keyboard part on Lou Reed's composition "All Tomorrow's Parties", which was sung by German actress Nico and included on the album The Velvet Underground and Nico, recorded in 1966.
Riley's collaborators have included the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Pauline Oliveros, the ARTE Quartett, and, as mentioned, the Kronos Quartet. His 1995 Lisbon Concert recording features him in a solo piano format, improvising on his own works. In the liner notes Riley cites Art Tatum, Bud Powell and Bill Evans as his piano "heroes", illustrating the importance of jazz to his conceptions.
Personal life
He has three children: one daughter, Colleen,[13] and two sons, Gyan, who is a guitarist, and Shahn.[14] He was married to Ann Riley until her death in 2015.[15]
Discography
1963: Music for The Gift (Organ of Corti 1, 1963)
1965: Reed Streams, Mass Art Inc. M-131
1967: You're No Good, recorded in 1967 but unreleased until 2000[16] (Cortical Foundation / Organ of Corti, 2000)[17]
1972: Happy Ending (soundtrack to Joël Santoni's film Les Yeux Fermés), Warner Bros. Records France 46125; Les Yeux Fermés & Lifespan, for solo electric organ; two soundtracks (2007 reissue)
1995: In C – 25th Anniversary Concert, version featuring Riley as one of four vocalists, recorded live January 14, 1990, San Francisco, New Albion Records
1995: Lisbon Concert, solo piano concert, recorded live July 16, 1995 Festival dos Capuchos, Teatro São Luis, Lisbon, Portugal., New Albion Records
1975: Lifespan. Film by Alexander Whitelaw feat. Klaus Kinski, Tina Aumont and Hiram Keller. Soundtrack released as Le secret de la vie in France, on Philips LP 9120 037 (1975).
1976: Music with Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 6: Terry Riley. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley. New York, New York: Lovely Music.
1986: In Between the Notes...a Portrait of Pandit Pran Nath, Master Indian Musician. Produced by Other Minds, directed by William Farley.
1995: Musical Outsiders: An American Legacy – Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, and Terry Riley. Directed by Michael Blackwood.
2008: "A Rainbow in Curved Air" features in the in-game soundtrack of Grand Theft Auto IV. It can be found when listening to the fictional radio station, "The Journey".
Gagne, Cole (1993). Soundpieces 2: Interviews with American Composers. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press. ISBN0-8108-2710-7
Meigh-Andrews, Chris, 2006. A History of Video Art.
Potter, Keith (2000). Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass. Music in the Twentieth Century series. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
.jpg)
