minimalist jukebox part III, terry riley
last night i got hear terry riley at the getty center. the first half featured his string trio and string quartet performed by the calder quartet who are currently in residency at julliard.
i hadn’t been planning to see the concert, mostly because of all the music being performed in the festival i knew this concert wasn’t featuring the any of terry’s sting music that i was most interested in. particularly cadenza on a plain and salome dances for peace. so when my friend j. michael walker called and asked if i wanted to go, i figured it was good karma to take him up on the offer.
in terms of artistic achievement the first half of the concert (string quartet and trio) really deserves little mention. i cannot figure out two things:
- why this music was programmed?
- who’s idea was it to have the calder quartet play it?
the first half of the concert resulted in a deep retrospective to show his development through two pieces; a boulez-influenced graduate thesis (string trio 1961) to the early lamont young/doug leedy influenced composition(string quartet, 1960).
because of the lack of any program notes, i’m not sure how many people in the audience came prepared with how these pieces related to the evening.
if riley’s name hadn’t been on the program, i’m sure many in the audience wouldn’t have any idea that the music was written by the same man.
using that same fuzzy logic, i guess since the first half featured music by riley written in his 20′s it only made sense to have musicians in their 20′s play it. the result reminded me of too many undergraduate composers forums i have attended. and i assume they came pretty close to reminding terry of his student days back in berkeley.
the second half of the concert was much more enjoyable. riley performed improvisations of much of the music he is known for. one of the first improvisations featured much of the repetitive patterns intermixed with a jazz standards (i’m fuzzy on my titles), coltrane influenced voice leading, with a little stride and ragtime piano thrown in. i’m sure the intent was a musical lecture (in the best spirit) to show the influences and relationships between all of the music he loves. i know many “important” composers wouldn’t dare show their “bag of tricks” that readily in public, but it only points to greatness of an artist when he/she is willing to show you what is behind the curtain.
oh yeah, on the last encore he played a improvised version of salome dances that i’ll never forget.
thanks terry,
paul
