Terry Riley

A giant of avant-garde music, Terry Riley was one of the fathers of minimalism in modern music. His innovations have been enormously influential not only to contemporary composers but to the more adventurous artists in the rock and electronic realms as well. Riley was born on June 24, 1935 in Colfax, California. Riley's life was irrevocably altered by meeting composer La Monte Young in 1960, when Riley was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. In collaboration with Young, Riley began to forge the concepts that would lead to his and Young's groundbreaking minimalist compositions. In the early-to-mid '60s, Riley's involvement with both the radical Fluxus art movement and the San Francisco Tape Music Center (the latter including the likes of Morton Subotnick and Pauline Oliveros) did much to inform his sensibilities. Riley was also heavily influence by Indian music, especially by his studies with vocalist Pandit Pran Nath. Riley's 1964 composition "In C," consisting of short, interlocking, repeated patterns, would become perhaps the most influential minimalist piece in history, and remains his best-known work. Making his way to New York City in 1965, Riley became a part of Young's legendary minimalist group The Theater of Eternal Music. In 1969, Riley released the album A Rainbow in Curved Air. The title piece, based on modal, overdubbed electronic keyboard patterns, remained his most seminal work after "In C." In 19871 Riley became known to rock audiences through Church of Anthrax, his duo album with the Velvet Underground's John Cale. Riley met Kronos Quartet founder David Harrington while teaching in Oakland at Mills College. Over the years he would write a multitude of pieces for the quartet to perform. Riley continued to compose, perform, and record into the 2010s.