{"id":2001660,"date":"2025-09-06T10:36:57","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T10:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2001660"},"modified":"2025-09-06T10:36:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T10:36:57","slug":"the-maximalist-father-of-minimalism-terry-riley-turns-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-maximalist-father-of-minimalism-terry-riley-turns-90\/","title":{"rendered":"The maximalist father of Minimalism, Terry Riley, turns 90"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On June 24, Terry Riley turned 90. It was a momentous occasion for American music that got little attention in the U.S. But Sunday night at the Ford, Bang on a Can All-Stars will pay tribute in a concert that surrounds \u201cIn C,\u201d Riley\u2019s 1964 work that was said to have launched Minimalism, with a few hints of where it came from and where music might yet go.<\/p>\n

Rhythmically mesmerizing and harmonically alluring, Minimalism proved the most persuasive new musical method of the late 20th century. It reached all forms of classical music and energized rock with its harmonic trance and rhythmic repetitions (The Who acknowledged him in \u201cBaba O\u2019Riley\u201d) and ultimately many forms of pop music and jazz. Opera succumbed, as did film music. The watered-down Minimalism that wormed its way into radio and TV commercials won\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n

Even so, \u201cIn C\u201d promises to endure as a classic for as long as musicians find meaning in communing with each other. Written for any number of musicians and any instruments (it sounds great on Chinese instruments and Javanese gamelan), it consists of 53 melodic fragments, each of which is repeated until a player feels ready to move on to the next. That feeling of readiness is meant to be both personal and a sensing of the mood of others. Every performance then becomes a pleasure offering of its own period, place and people.<\/p>\n

Riley didn\u2019t invent Minimalism; a belief in revolutionary new beginnings was in the cultural air at the San Francisco premiere. Composers were fooling around with repetition, drones, tape loops and the like. There was an overpowering quest for spiritual betterment, along with a demand for permission to pursue your passion and an insistence on unfettered expression. \u201cIn C\u201d appeared an agent of those good times, a shot of adrenaline (maybe mixed with a pinch of mescaline) into new music.<\/p>\n

For Riley, \u201cIn C\u201d launched a maximal musical journey and one of the most remarkable in American music. If he was the father of Minimalism \u2014 or, more accurately, the affable uncle \u2014 he presented \u201cIn C\u201d as a gift to the world, rather than a plan for action.<\/p>\n

The first recording came out in 1968 <\/a>as an LP in a gatefold jacket that opened to reveal the score of those 53 fragments. Anyone could perform it. No royalties. It just so happened that the predecessor to \u201cIn C,\u201d written the year before during a brief residency in Paris for the jazz star Chet Baker, happened to be called the \u201cThe Gift.\u201d In it, Riley experiments with tape looping and live mixing of electronic music, previewing the fluid, unpredictable nature of \u201cIn C.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley, a native Californian born in born in Colfax and raised in Redlands, remembers having his first spiritual awaking at age 2 when he heard a song on the radio. From that moment to his present life in Japan, he has sought musical enlightenment in music wherever he can find it.<\/p>\n

His pilgrim’s progress began in his early years as a virtuoso pianist, enamored with Ravel and ragtime, to radical experimentation with electronics and pulse and drones as a student at UC Berkeley to extensive raga study in India to becoming a highly influential composition teacher at Mills College in Oakland. There were decades of traveling the world giving improvisatory keyboard recitals that sometimes included all-night organ recitals in Gothic French cathedrals.<\/p>\n

Five years ago, Riley landed in the mountains of Japan, where he has remained ever since, and last year I visited him in his small apartment in Kobuchizawa. Step outside and Mt. Fuji loomed, as if a distant but personal stupa.<\/p>\n

Riley had been invited to perform at a festival on Sado Island. After visiting the site in February 2020, he was about to set out on a world tour when COVID-19 struck and Japan immediately locked down. A former student, Sara Miyamoto, and her husband, Tadashi, a concert promoter, told Riley of an apartment next to theirs in the foothills of the Yamanashi Mountains where the couple could look after him.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s still there. He has traveled throughout Japan and taught in Kyoto and Tokyo. When his son, composer and guitarist Gyan Riley, visits, they sometimes give concerts together in Japan. While Riley says he is not against one day returning to California, he doesn\u2019t expect to find the need.<\/p>\n

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