Terry Riley

Brand new Terry Riley CD,  BH2K was commissioned by the Paul Dresher Ensemble and first performed on Feb. 10, 2001 at. Stanford University as part of the Lively Arts Festival and featured Terry Riley as piano soloist.  The fifty-minute work is in four movements.  The work takes the form of a chamber concerto and was written specifically for the performance capabilities of the Dresher Ensemble and guest soloist Tracy Silverman on Electric Viola. The first movement is the most classical in form and content opening with a piano solo that leads to the opening theme. After variations on the opening them the driving secondary subject is introduced and then combined with the opening theme.  There follows more secondary themes that lead into the spacious Chorale from which the movement derives it’s name. Then follows a piano cadenza that leads to the Eastern sounding Coda, which concludes the movement. The Maze is a Labyrinthine movement based on polymetric patterns that float over a 17 beat rhythmic cycle.  It is scored in an open way to allow the ensemble choices on how to assemble the flow of the music  Goodbye Goodtimes Blues for Millenniums Child is my one Millennium piece, feeling fortunate to be one of those having a foot in both the 20th and 21st centuries..  The inspiration was to create an old time blues tune, reminiscent of the music of the 20’s and 30’s that gives way to a more hard core version of 21st century Blues showing how this old “American Raga” is capable of so many expressions as it crosses over this imaginary time marker.  This movement is open to large sections of improvisation.
 Danzero, a made-up name for  a movement with  south American flavoring.  It is the concluding movement containing shifting rhythms and tempos combining the tunefulness of Brazilian Choros superimposed on compound and polyrhythmic structures.  Toward the end of the movement there are many improvised solos over the Latin groove that impels  the highly energized ending.