aworks :: "new" american classical music

Keyboard Study No. 1 (1965). Terry Riley /cool/

HurdAudio blogs about a recording of Terry Riley keyboard music by Steffen Schleiermacher:

Electronically aided interpretations of the early Terry Riley compositions as a labor of love. A love of the static textures and pulsating beauty that erupts through the fine details of repeated patterns sliding apart from one another.

I have numerous Terry Riley recordings and numerous Steffen Schleiermacher recordings and somehow, I know nothing of the intersection of these two fine artists. 

A quick check shows these are not readily available for download from emusic or Amazon (although on CD from the latter). And highlighting yet another hole in my collection, Amazon also has a different CD of Riley keyboard music, this time by the Italian Fabrizio Ottaviucci.

Keith Potter on the work: 

Keyboard Study no. 1 was also called Coule; the title is a pun on the French word for 'flowing' or 'gliding' (or in musical terminology, the 'slur' as a phrase marking), and Riley pronounces it, as though without its acute accent. 'Cool', a term of colloquial approbation still new when the piece was first conceived.

YouTube has a video that presumably uses the music from one of these recordings:

La Muerte en Medias Caladas Negras (1993). Terry Riley /free as in minimal/

last.fm has just announced the opening up of their music streaming.  I'm still sorting out what this means, but in the meantime, here is Terry Riley's La Muerte en Medias Caladas Negras from the album The Book Of Abbeyozzud.

Terry Riley – La Muerte en Medias Caladas Negras

Hmm, this is freely streamable from imeem as well:

The Harp of New Albion (1985) Terry Riley /a northern california kind of story/

And another minimalist classic...

Music Arcades describes Terry Riley's The Harp of New Albion:

The sleeve notes also explain the concept (yes) of the album, which centre on a harp that Francis Drake allegedly left behind in Northern California when he was trying to circumnavigate the globe in an overloaded Golden Hinde. Riley's semi-improvised pieces are a meditation on what happened to that harp as the wind blew in it, it weathered, warped and re-tuned itself, and was found by Native Americans who incorporated it into their culture.

Here's a sample via a performance on YouTube. Also available for Amazon preview and download.

You're Nogood (1968). Terry Riley

Another oddity on Streampad, this time from Music for Maniacs/Dinosaur Gardens, it's Terry Riley augmenting Harvey Averne's You're No Good with tape manipulation in an early proto-remix circa 1968. Sock it to me:

The result is 12 minutes of tape-looped lunacy, with sine-wave and Moogs thrown in here and there as well. Was this actually played at the disco? And did anyone dance?

Soul Sides on the original Averne song:

It's those moments, when the women are seeking their revenge that every element in this song: the arrangement, production and vocals, all come together beautifully.

Steve Reich has talked about how his musical aesthetic was influenced by vernacular music; here Riley literally uses pop for his source material. The Streampad player follows:

wikipedia: terry riley. remix. laugh-in. 1968. organ of corti: terry riley releases.

Poppy Nogood (1969). Terry Riley

I've been playing with pandora, last.fm and the pandorafm mash-up this weekend. Pandora suffers from a lack of classical music and on last.fm, I just can't find good streams I like, except for the stream comprised of music I've already indicated I like. This just in: the Terry Riley station I just created in pandora is promising. The report upon playing his Poppy Nogood:

Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features new age influences, classical influences, new orleans jazz influences, odd meter grooves, and off beat style.

I won't disavow liking any of those musical traits, although the "new orleans" part surprised me since that isn't how I would describe Riley's improvisation. I should also say that after three or four tracks on the station, the new age, seventies synthesized sounds begin to annoy.

If you go to the last.fm page for Terry Riley, it lists related artists unknown to me -- Jef Gilson and Malagasy, Ellende, Hal Blaine, Mellow Candle -- and those to be expected -- La Monte Young, Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, and John Cage.

Generally, Pandora uses the classification of the Music Genome Project to recommend music and now Wikipedia reveals all the individual genome attributes in use. Let's see: there's angry lyrics, avant-garde leanings, chill rhymin', clear pronunciation, flat out funky grooves, good dose of acoustic guitar pickin', mumbling vocals, subtle use of turntables, and wet recording sound (as well as more traditional music terms). If only Pandora allowed one to explicitly choose the desired attributes; I'd like to hear something that combines avant-garde leanings with a good dose of acoustic guitar pickin' and a bit of mumbling vocals. Bob Dylan and The Band play the music of Robert Ashley maybe...

I also tried to create a channel seeded by Miles Davis' Pharoah's Dance, but it plays innumerable jazz trumpet tracks, all acoustic rather than electric.

Finally, a description of Poppy Nogood from the Looper's Delight web page:

The first five minutes of the recording is dominated by a horde of saxophone parts reverbed into a chaotic wash of sound, underpinned by a low D drone from the organ.

playing on the terry riley station: jazz violinist jean-luc ponty, some brian eno track with viola, and pendulum music by steve reich

A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969).

Steven Rubio notices his recent tendencies towards sixties music nostalgia. Me, I may be obsessed with early electronic bands right now -- Tangerine Dream's Phaedra, early Pink Floyd (except for that folkish, child-like, twee junk) etc. Then, Dancing about Architecture describes Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air:

It’s sort of halfway between Joe Zawinul and Switched-On Bach.

Weather Report and Walter/Wendy Carlos! Those were the days (I say that without irony)...

now playing: pearl jam singing and playing (poorly) the who's baba o'riley wikipedia: wendy carlos tangerine dream pink floyd joe zawinul weather report

Cantos Desiertos (1993-). Terry Riley

London's Tim Rutherford-Johnson has his Music on a Shoestring concert listings. More modestly, tomorrow night, the Bay Area has a free concert of note -- Music Written after 1988:

On Tuesday, March 28 at 8:00 PM Formerly Known As Classical will present their first concert at Temple United Methodist Church, 65 Beverly Street (at Shields Street) in San Francisco [near San Francisco State]. Admission is free but donations will be accepted for Amnesty International.

Map here. Artistic director Matthew Cmiel speaks wisely:

It is true that in modern music anything goes, but it is also true that if anything goes there is probably music out there that will surprise and delight people.

To illustrate, on the program is Riley's guitar piece Cantos Desiertos -- Billboard calls it "mellifluous," aworks says the David Tanenbaum recording (with William Winant, Gyan Riley, and Terry Silverman) on New Albion is "excellent," and The Wire describes that album thusly:

The music sounds much as you would anticipate: American chamber with Jelly Roll Morton's beloved 'Spanish tinge', the Eastern modes which Riley sets his stars by, and that unique pragmatism which [Glenn] Gould suggested was manifest as music which 'requires instructions rather than instruction'.

Other works of note on a compelling program include John Adams' Halleluiah Junction, David Conte's Of a Summer Evening, Osvaldo Golijov's The Last Round, Preben Antonsen's Nicklecurve as well as Cmiel's Sonata for Lou Harrison.

photo of milton babbitt with preben antonsen et al here. review of the naxos recording of desiertos here. university of iowa center for human rights. wikipedia on Lou Harrison and William Colvig.

The Harp of New Albion (1986). Terry Riley

   

Interesting post from Devin Hurd regarding a partial arrangement for guitar of Terry Riley's The Harp of New Albion. I'm not as enamored of that work as I used to be so a new version might inspire. Still, I can remember a year where my listening revolved around this work, Philip Glass' Music in Twelve Parts, miscellaneous Steve Reich especially Music for Mallet Instruments, Voice, and Organ, the Kronos Quartet playing Riley's Salome Dances for Peace, and La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano. Blissful, one and all.

Riley on his composition:

The idea of piano as harp influences my method of playing, as does the tuning from which the particular consonances and dissonances determine the emerging energies that flow through both instrument and performer.

The Church of Anthrax (1971). John Cale and Terry Riley

Paul Hinrichs waxes nostalgic for the long-playing album:

This is the sound of a needle dropping on a vinyl LP. It lasts about 3/10 of a second and it’s still one of my favorite sounds. Big Jackets, good artwork, liner notes big enough to read.

While I miss album covers, I can live without the sound of the needle as it gets accidentally bumped and scratches across the record. There's an old Monty Python bit where, at the end of the side, someone screams "Not this record!" and then you hear the noise of the needle being dragged over the vinyl. I still shudder at that gag...

HInrichs goes on to rip The Church of Anthrax for computer playback.

Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector (1981). Terry Riley

The Terry Riley 70th birthday celebration continues with a Kronos Quartet concert at Music in the Mountain's Summer Fest in Grass Valley, CA (near Riley's Nevada County home). The concert includes four Riley works and among others, Flugufrelsarinn (The Fly Freer) by Sigor Ros.

Riley on Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector's origins:

In 1980, when asked by David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet to compose some music for their, at that time very young group, I chose this work as a starting point.  It had been over ten years since I had written any music on paper as I had occupied myself at that time with keyboard improvisation and the study of North Indian Raga but I felt the atmosphere of this work would be very appropriated for strings.