Riley, Terry
Entry updated 30 November 2024. Tagged: Music, People.
(1935- ) US composer, one of the most influential and enduring figures associated with minimalist music from the 1960s onwards, as evidenced by much-recorded pieces such as In C (1963), though much of his subsequent work strays far from minimalist orthodoxy. He was also a pioneer of electronic composition, most famously A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969). Sun Rings (original multimedia presentation 2002, first full recording 2019) combines a string quartet, electronics, a choir and recordings from NASA's Voyager missions to convey a journey out of the Solar System and back again, after which humanity will become united: the final movement is titled "One Earth, One People, One Love". Ironically, the music is more conventionally pretty and less "cosmic" than his non-programmatic earlier works. [CWa]
Terrence Mitchell Riley
born Colfax, California: 24 June 1935
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