Uncle Jard 	(19:38)
1 	Part I 	5:17
2 	Part II 	8:36
3 	Part III 	5:32

4 	Assassin Reverie 	18:43
5 	Tread On The Trail (Version For 12 Saxophones)	9:56

Alto Saxophone – Sascha Armbruster
Baritone Saxophone, Edited By – Beat Kappeler
Effects, Sound Designer – Beat Kappeler (tracks: 4)
Soprano Saxophone – Beat Hofstetter
Tenor Saxophone – Andrea Formenti
Vocals, Piano, Harpsichord – Terry Riley (tracks: 1 to 3)

American composer Terry Riley turned 70 in June 2005, at which time his presence on the American music scene had been a constant for more than 40 years. He is often categorized as a "minimalist," and many regard his piece In C as the touchstone of musical minimalism itself. Riley refuses to contract himself to either minimalism, or any other designation that his large and categorically bewildering life's work might be held to. New World's Assassin Reverie adds yet another dimension to the multi-sided corpus of Riley, this one done in collaboration with the expert German saxophone ensemble ARTE Quartett. Assassin Reverie contains three works as different from one another as can be imagined, especially considering that they are all scored for saxophone ensemble. If they share some sense of commonality, it is that all three come from the darker side of Riley's musical personality.

Uncle Jard is a multi-movement work that seems to have some difficulty getting off the ground, focusing on drones among the saxophones as Riley sings in a style informed by Indian Classical music. Once in the middle of the piece, we encounter a playful, funky section where Riley sings about "Uncle Jard," an imaginary friend belonging to his grandchildren. The wry wit and humor of this section comes as a completely unexpected diversion and a highly entertaining one. Assassin Reverie is an unusually violent piece based around a tape collage that assembles growingly agitated sounds of war and battle, a provocative work that Riley states is "the result of living in a post-9/11 world."

The pièce de resistance, though, is retained for Assassin Reverie's conclusion; Tread on the Tail, a piece from around the time of In C that has not been heard since it was first rolled out at the San Francisco Tape Center in 1965. Inspired by a Sonny Rollins concert Riley took in at about that time, Tread on the Tail is as dark, foreboding, and compelling as In C is light, sunny, and persuasive. Riley fans who think of him in a new agey vein expecting to find something like A Rainbow in Curved Air here might be disappointed, but enthusiasts of serious contemporary music will be blown away, as Assassin Reverie is the most challenging and rewarding Riley album that had appeared in some time. ---Uncle Dave Lewis, AllMusic Review

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1 	Diamond Fiddle Language I 	14:50
2 	Tritono 	12:36
3 	Diamond Fiddle Language II 	27:01

Terry Riley - Electronics [Synthesizer], Voice
Stefano Scodanibbio - Double Bass

Live Recordings:
1. Huddersfield, 28 Nov. 1998
2. San Sebastian, 26 Apr. 2000
3. Lanzarote, 8 Oct. 1999 

Minimalist composer Terry Riley and avant-garde bassist Stefano Scodanibbio collaborated on Diamond Fiddle Language over a period of a year and a half and recorded this disc's two versions in separate locations: a concert hall in Huddersfield, England, and the lava caves of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. A side-by-side comparison of the renditions reveals more differences in mood and attitude than changes of pitch content or dramatically altered shapes of the whole work. Diamond Fiddle Language I seems rather tight, expository, and focused, while Diamond Fiddle Language II has a looser improvisational feeling and suggests a more relaxed playing around the edges of the material. Though Riley uses scales based on the pentatonic raga malkauns, and adjusts them to Scodanibbio's varied tunings, the effect of their playing together is much more harmonically complex and free in execution, hovering somewhere between jazz and aleatoric experimentation. At its later stage of development, DFL II is less inhibited than DFL I, and its resonant venue is more conducive to taking liberties. Tritono, a duet based on the diminished fifth (D sharp/A), provides an interlude between the two DFL performances; this tour de force serves to focus concentration and clears the air between the two larger, spacier improvisations. These live recordings are quite clear and full of presence, and the few audience noises are tolerable. --- Blair Sanderson, AllMusic Review

Perhaps to some listeners this reprise of Terry Riley and Stefano Scodanibbio’s initial 1997 encounter, entitled Lazy Afternoon Among the Crocodiles, does live up to its billing in the booklet-notes as ‘European avant-garde meets American minimalism’. More to the point, though, is that it continues to chart a sonic common ground between two artists who defy any conventional labels within their respective musical cultures.

Indeed, to call this music ‘works for keyboard and double bass’ does little justice to the range of playing techniques, applied technology and musical sensibilities that can fuse composition with improvisation, or traditional raga with modern electronics. Scodanibbio’s scordatura tuning in the bass is matched to perfection on Riley’s keyboards (and nearly so on his Indian-inflected vocals), the bassists’ technique of bowing with one hand while plucking with another smoothly mated to the keyboardist’s manual multi-tasking. Such a wealth of colour and stylistic brushstrokes fill the canvas that it’s nearly impossible to believe that only two people are involved.

The range of what Riley and Scodanibbio accomplish is best grasped by comparing the two performances of Diamond Fiddle Language, a piece containing specific modalities and an overall form but also considerable room for the performers to manoeuvre. It may be a stretch to hear the ‘Victorian architecture’ of the first performances (recorded at the 1998 Huddersfield Festival) with ‘volcanic galleries’ of the second (recorded a year later in the Canary Islands) but no doubt Riley and Scodanibbio return to a completely different place. ---K Smith, gramophone.co.uk

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1. Aleph Part 1			45:48 
2. Aleph Part 2			1:07:49

Terry Riley - Composer, Performer, Producer, Recording, Synthesizer 

In his liner notes to Aleph, Terry Riley explains that the work was created as "an improvised meditation on the various meanings of this supreme emanation from the Hebrew alphabet." It was made using a Korg Triton Studio 88 synth with his own sound design, and employing a just intonation scale used by Lou Harrison on his last work, "Nek Chand for Just Intonation National Steel Guitar," which was performed by Riley's son Gyan on the album Serenado. Riley has been using the scale for some time. The weird thing is that this set, as beautiful as it sounds, was originally recorded as an MP3 rather than a WAV file. It appears the composer was too occupied with his inspiration to bother about the details in his home studio setup, but Aleph was painstakingly restored by Scott Hull. Comprised of two discs, the length of this piece resembles, to a lesser degree, Riley's "All Night Flights" and "Sleeping Bag Concerts" of the 1960s. But there is more at work here than adhering to scales and inspiration. Dynamics shift throughout. Pauses, elongated notes, microtones, and overtones feed and emanate from one another; simple drones meet not by chance, but by disciplined intuition (which, the listener can infer, comes from the composer's longstanding practice of meditation -- and the skeptic can disregard as nothing of the sort). The Triton sounds like a looped soprano saxophone in some places and an organ in others. The sheer number of phrases and statements is so plentiful -- even with repetition -- that it is impossible to count them. There are phases when notes of indeterminate length and number are pulled together, then separated again, as pulses and even melodic clusters. That said, this cannot be called "minimalism" -- that would be too easy, and wildly incorrect. There is no strategy at work on Aleph, which is perhaps what makes it work so well. Randomness is here, but it's guided by something in the composer's developed, but not necessarily conscious, aesthetic. To that end, cutting it into two discs -- of different lengths by over 15 minutes -- must have been a hellish chore. Aleph makes one wish that both sides of a compact disc would be recorded on, then read in sequence, so there would be no break. Riley has used many of his strengths in this focused "meditation" or "improvisation," or however you wish to define it. He has drawn no particular attention to one aspect of the recording or another. It's as if all of the music here simply came into being at once, from the ether, without beginning or end; but that's impossible. Right? ---Thom Jurek, AllMusic Review

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Terry Riley - Dark Queen Mantra
1. I. Vizcaino
2. II. Goya with Wings
3. IIII. Dark Queen Mantra

Stefano Scodanibbio - Mas Lugares (su Madrigali di Monteverdi)
4. I. Allegro
5. II. Io mi son giovinetta
6. III. Largo
7. IV. Quell’augellin, che canta
8. V. Che se tu se’ ‘l cor mio

Terry Riley
9. The Wheel & Mythic Birds Waltz

Gyan Riley - guitar
Del Sol String Quartet:
Charlton Lee - violin
Kate Stenberg - violin
Kathryn Bates Williams - viola
Rick Shinozaki - cello

For the Del Sol Quartet, this album is a culmination – and also the start of an ongoing musical journey. Terry Riley doesn’t limit his music within a final double-bar but allows it to keep on growing – he’s already composed more music for us to play together. As a quartet, we’ve found new energy and growth through the experience of performing Terry’s quartets off-book, by memory. As musicians, we’ve found an inspiring example – Terry has the strength to follow his own path balanced with the humility and curiosity of an eternal student. For our 25th anniversary festival, we are focusing on Terry’s music and honored that Terry and Gyan will be joining us.

Like so many worthwhile endeavors, this album began with a friendship. Del Sol violist Charlton Lee first met guitarist Gyan while playing in an ensemble led by the composer/bassist Gavin Bryars. “I’d been wanting to find more opportunities to play with Gyan ever since we met,” Charlton explains. “And with Terry’s 80th birthday on the horizon it seemed a perfect time to commission a new piece for all of us to play together.”

For the other dimension of this album, we had long been aware of Stefano Scodanibbio’s awesome abilities as a trailblazing double-bass virtuoso, we had our first chance to perform his music thanks to Gyan. Gyan curated a memorial concert celebrating Stefano’s music at The Stone in New York City and invited us to participate.

Del Sol String Quartet Hailed by Gramophone as “masters of all musical things they survey” and two-time winner of the top Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the Del Sol String Quartet shares living music with an ever-growing community of adventurous listeners.

Recognized as a “vigorous champion of living composers,” Del Sol has premiered well over 100 works through its extensive commissioning and innovative performances. The composers represent a diverse range of contemporary voices, including Terry Riley, Mason Bates, Frederic Rzewski, Ben Johnston, Gabriela Lena Frank, Chinary Ung, Tania León, Ken Ueno, Peter Sculthorpe, Reza Vali, Mohammed Fairouz and Per Nørgård.

Guitarist Gyan Riley’s diverse work now focuses on his own compositions, improvisation, and contemporary classical repertoire. Gyan has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, New Music USA, the Carnegie Hall Corporation, the American Composers Forum, and the New York Guitar Festival. He has performed with Zakir Hussain, Lou Reed, John Zorn, the Kronos Quartet, Iva Bittova, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the San Francisco Symphony, the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, and his father, the composer/pianist/vocalist Terry Riley. /p>

Terry Riley Composer and performer Terry Riley is one of the founders of music’s minimalist movement. His early works, notably “In C,” pioneered a form in Western music based on structured interlocking repetitive patterns. The influence of Riley’s hypnotic, multilayered, polymetric, brightly orchestrated Eastern-flavored improvisations and compositions is heard across the span of contemporary and popular music.

Stefano Scodanibbio was a brilliant inventor of new musical possibilities, virtuoso performer, and phenomenal improviser. He came to prominence in the 1980s, premiering solo contrabass works by Brian Ferneyhough, Iannis Xenakis, Salvatore Sciarrino, Giacinto Scelsi, Gerard Grisey and others. His bass technique was so inventive that Luigi Nono used the indication “arco mobile à la Stefano Scodanibbio” in the score of Prometeo. He composed over fifty works, principally for strings. --- sonoluminus.com

The late-life creativity of Terry Riley is cause for celebration in troubled times, and this release by California's Del Sol Quartet makes a fine place to start exploring it. As with Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Riley's musical language has evolved since his days as the West Coast pioneer of minimalism, but a basic personality has remained constant. Dark Queen Mantra, performed here with Riley's son, Gyan Riley, on guitar, is flavored by Spanish idioms, but is in no way a neoclassical work. If you had to compare it to anything, it would compare to Reich's Jewish-themed works, but really it is sui generis. You might sample the melodic "Goya with Wings" second movement, which was inspired by paintings of Francisco Goya. Mas Lugares (su madrigali di Monteverdi) by Italian Stefano Scodanibbio, a friend of Riley's, makes an unusually good pairing with Riley: it stands in the same relationship to Monteverdi as Riley does to his Spanish models. The finale, The Wheel & Mythic Birds Waltz (which is not a waltz at all), is an older work originally performed by the Kronos Quartet; the entire program shows how the San Francisco scene that group helped nurture has remained vital and continued to develop. Recommended, and not only for admirers of Riley's work. ---James Manheim, allmusic.com

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1 	The Descending Moonshine Dervishes 	32:31
2 	Sunrise Of The Planetary Dream Collector 	20:40

Organ – Terry Riley
Trumpet, Ngoni [Doussn'Gouni] – Don Cherry (tracks: 1)

Another incredible treasure from the vaults of Cologne radio, recorded in February 22/23rd, 1975. Unreleased sessions, carefully remastered, in this duo improvisation Riley's organ intersections just define the geometry of the hyper-dimensional space where Don Cherry's outwordly trumpet lives. Mantric and evocative, we could go on and on listening to the very same track all day long, it could last forever...

In 1975, pioneering minimalist composer Terry Riley and jazz trumpet cosmonaut Don Cherry joined forces for a magnetic performance in Köln, Germany. But they also recorded these incredible radio sessions: Riley’s swirling synth, droning and clairvoyant and prescient in its clarity, parades along with a triumphant Cherry, leaving behind trails of mystery and a sense of beauty in a larger, more universal form. We have a “Descending Moonshine Dervishes” lasting 32 minutes, a transcendent moment of improvisational experimentation and spiritual jazz. As Cherry’s physical presence slowly liquifies, “the lonesome foghorn blows” into some kind of misty dawn.

Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector follows the compositional model Riley had created earlier with his famous minimalist masterpiece In C from 1964. If any music was to represent quantum void, Terry Riley's multi-layered organ patterns are definitely the most suitable candidate. They constitute a steady, everchanging background which is always and never the same at the same time, with epiphanic particles rising from the fluctuation and disappearing immediately after, just to reappear where you'd never have expected them to. This meeting between Terry Riley’s amazing all-night-flight organ styles and Cherry’s devotional trumpet work, is staggering document and another fascinating uncovering of a key moment in the secret history of holy minimalism. --- soundohm.com

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The Palmian Chord Ryddle (2011) 	(35:23)
1 	I. Starting From Here - 	5:19
2 	II. Iberia - 	6:34
3 	III. Slow Drag - 	3:13
4 	IV. Towards The Clouds - 	5:49
5 	V. For Maresa - 	3:11
6 	VI. Ghandi-Ji's Danda - 	5:23
7 	VII. Wedding Music - 	4:22
8 	VIII. The Afterglow 	1:33

At The Royal Majestic (2013) 	(33:58)
9 	I. Negro Hall 	15:36
10 	II. The Lizard Tower Gang 	4:37
11 	III. Circling Kailash 	13:45

Tracy Silverman - violin [electric] (tracks: 1 to 8) 
Todd Wilson - organ
Nashville Symphony
Giancarlo Guerrero - conductor

The late career of Terry Riley, who was 82 years old when the later of these two works, At the Royal Majestic, was recorded for this album in 2017, has received less attention than that of Philip Glass or even Steve Reich. The resurgent Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero makes a good case here that such neglect is misguided. Riley has written a number of concertos in the 2000s, often for specific instrumentalists, and the two works here are concertos of vastly different character. The motor rhythms of early minimalism are used, but by this time they are more an accent than a structural element. The Palmian Chord Ryddle (2011) is an eclectic, playful eight-movement work for electric violin and orchestra, with the electric violin of Nashville's Tracy Silverman offering some quartet-like effects, but steering mostly clear of highly extended techniques. The "Palmian Chord" of the title is a cluster-like sonority of Riley's own devising, appearing at the beginning. Several movements have a strong jazz influence -- sample the "Slow Drag" -- effectively set off against the Indian sounds of "Gandhi-Ji's Danda" and other contrasting sections. The piece, although fully notated, has a loose, improvisatory feel. Even stronger is At the Royal Majestic, an homage to the golden age of the theater organ, for which Todd Wilson and his Martin Foundation Concert Organ provide an effective stand-in. Engineering kudos go to producer Tim Handley and engineer Gary Call for maintaining clarity in an extremely diverse set of materials. Highly recommended. ---James Manheim, AllMusic Review

Terry Riley’s name will always be associated with his breakthrough work In C, but his influence on modern music has stretched far beyond minimalism. Both of the works on this recording reveal Riley’s spirit of exploration and his close collaboration with remarkable musicians. Commissioned by the Nashville Symphony, The Palmian Chord Ryddle is a kind of musical autobiography in which electric violin pioneer Tracy Silverman’s “one-man string quartet” sets the pace for the sparse, translucent orchestration. At the Royal Majestic is another recent example of Riley’s work with a symphony orchestra and a virtuosic soloist, in this case organist Todd Wilson. Its title refers to “the mighty Wurlitzer housed in grand movie palaces,” and the music draws on a wide variety of genres including gospel, ragtime, Baroque chorales, and boogie. ---naxos.com

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1.Raga Bihag Alap 	04:00
2.Cells 1 – 8	 08:49
3.Cells 9 – 11		03:45
4.Cells 12 – 13		03:01
5.Cells 14 - 16 		04:08
6.Cells 17 - 21 		07:56
7.Cells 22 – 27		 07:30
8.Cells 28 - 34 		11:49
9.Cells 35 - 41 		06:24
10.Cells 42 – 47		09:29
11.Cell 48	 03:07
12.Cells 49 - 53 (Jhalla)		 04:55

Brooklyn Raga Massive (BRM):
Neel Murgai - Sitar & Vocal
Arun Ramamurthy - Violin
Andrew Shantz - Vocal
Josh Geisler - Bansuri
Sameer Gupta - Tabla
Roshni Samlal - Tabla
Eric Fraser - Bansuri
Timothy Hill - Vocal
Trina Basu - Violin
Ken Shoji - Violin
Kane Mathis - Oud
Adam Malouf - Cello
Michael Gam - Bass
Lauren Crump - Cajon
David Ellenbogen - Guitar
Maz ZT - Hammered Dulcimer
Vin Scialla - Riq & Frame Drum
Aaron Shragge - Dragon Mouth Trumpet

Brooklyn Raga Massive (BRM), a collective of forward thinking musicians rooted in Indian classical music, release Terry Riley In C recorded live in concert with 18 musicians at Joe’s Pub on January 11, 2017. Indian classical music is often a lonely affair involving 3 or 4 musicians at most. Sitarist Neel Murgai identified the canonic minimalist masterpiece as an accessible way for a critical mass of BRM musicians to play together. Terry Riley himself, after listening to an early performance recording, suggested they “use the basic In C form but open it up to solos...based on some of the patterns.” BRM’s arrangement of In C incorporates raga, Indian ornamentation, driving tabla rhythms, improvised solos and an instrumentation of sitar, sarod, bansuri, vocals, tabla, hammered dulcimer, oud, violin, cello, upright bass, dragon mouth trumpet, guitar, cajon, riq and frame drum.

Terry Riley composed In C in 1964, but this release marks the first time it has been performed and recorded by a group featuring so many Indian classical musicians and raga elements. The piece’s basic structure consists of 53 cells of music for any instrumentation, short fragments that each performer repeats, displaces and moves through at their own will. Terry Riley is a long time practitioner of Indian classical vocal music, having studied with Pandit Pran Nath, but he confirmed that “I have never heard an ensemble like this playing In C.” BRM brings the composition full circle with this unique rendition.

BRM performs and presents over 70 concerts annually including an ongoing weekly concert and jam session at venues including Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Celebrate Brooklyn, Pioneer Works, MOMA, Rubin Museum and more.Their extensive repertoire includes Terry Riley’s In C, a Coltrane Raga Tribute, Indian classical and original works by various members of the collective. BRM is a 501 c3 Non-profit run by musicians for musicians dedicated to spreading raga inspired music across the globe. This is BRM’s first release with Northern Spy Records, and the first time the group’s work will be available on CD. --- bkragamassive.bandcamp.com

Terry Riley would certainly bristle at the idea of there being a "definitive" version of In C, since it was created with the intention of having an infinite number interpretive possibilities, but this version, a reissue of the original Columbia recording, led by the composer, has a certain authority since it was the means by which the piece was introduced to a broad public and it paved the way for the biggest revolution in classical composition in the second half of the twentieth century. It has the hallmarks that came to define musical minimalism: triadic harmony, a slow rate of harmonic change, a steady pulse, and the use of repetitive patterns. In this performance, it has a shiny, almost metallic brightness and a visceral energy that immediately set it apart from the intellectually rigorous and austere trends in the new music establishment of the 1960s. The performance, by members of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts of SUNY Buffalo, is disciplined, staying within the parameters Riley prescribes, but is also freely inventive, taking advantage of the opportunities Riley gives the performers for creative self-expression. The result sounds spontaneous but assured, never chaotic or capricious. The ensemble understood and had rehearsed the piece thoroughly, performing it at Carnegie Hall not long before this recording was made in 1968, when the piece was already four years old. For listeners with a sympathy for minimalism, the energy of this performance can be a wild and exhilarating ride, and it will be a nostalgic trip for anyone who knew it in its earlier incarnations on LP or cassette tape. ---Stephen Eddins, AllMusic Review

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1 	Sun Rings Overture 	1:25
2 	Hero Danger 	7:15
3 	Beebopterismo 	7:14
4 	Planet Elf Sindoori 	7:48
5 	Earth Whistler	10:04
6 	Earth / Jupiter Kiss 	6:38
7 	The Electron Cyclotron Frequency Parlour 	5:59
8 	Prayer Central	16:43
9 	Venus Upstream 	7:17
10 	One Earth, One People, One Love 	9:05

Kronos Quartet:
David Harrington, John Sherba - violin
Hank Dutt - viola
Sunny Yang - cello
+
Volti - chorus (5,8)
Robert Geary - director (5,8)

Terry Riley's collaborations with the Kronos Quartet have gained substantial audiences and continue to develop in interesting ways, even into Riley's old age. They can't be called minimalist even under a broad definition of the term, for they incorporate a wide range of influences. Perhaps none of those influences has been at once as exotic and yet as directly accessible as the use of actual electronic sounds from outer space in Sun Rings, recorded during missions of the Voyager and Galileo space probes. The work was composed in 2001 and 2002 and has been tweaked periodically since then. Riley sums up the work's appeal neatly: "the intention [is] to let the sounds of space influence the string quartet writing and then to let there be an interplay between live 'string' and recorded 'space' sound." Sun Rings is thus a part of the larger genre of works that combine analog and electronic sounds, but it's a unique example that has a pictorial aspect any listener can grasp. As Riley indicates, the relationship between the string quartet and the space sounds has two modalities: the string quartet can either become part of outer space or represent the human element. A chorus enters later on, and the finale has some abstract intoned texts of a vaguely astrological nature; these, Riley says, are "to further emphasize that this work is largely about humans as they reach out from earth to gain an awareness of their solar system neighborhood." They detract from the focus though: the string quartet is capable of representing the human element by itself. You can sample anywhere to hear the work's characteristic mixture of spooky and calmly warm. Highly recommended. ---James Manheim, AllMusic Review

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1 	Lion's Throne	10:55
2 	Arica	21:37
3 	Crazy World	16:26
4 	Cancione	16:26
5 	Tarana In Hindol	9:50

- Terry Riley - vocals, piano, keyboards, composer (1-3,5)
- Amelia Cuni - vocals, composer (4)
+
- Francis Silkstone - Baroque violin (5)
- Tatty Theo - Baroque cello (5)
- Bhavani Shankar - Mridangam (5)

The Lion’s Throne bears witness to the performances that the legendary composer Terry Riley and Italian singer Amelia Cuni did together in the United Kingdom and Italy between 1999 and 2006. Riley, whose remarkable body of work seamlessly integrates a lifetime of devotion to Indian classical music into the western classical tradition, collaborates with Cuni, a singer trained in Dhrupad who, like Riley, experiments with Indian singing in a variety of ways.

In these recordings, Riley plays piano or keyboards and sings with Cuni. Together, they improvise in Hindi, English, and Italian, drawing from their Indian music background as well as from western traditions. They sing on ancient and modern texts, creating a new blend which mirrors their own musical paths.

“I first met Amelia Cuni in Berlin in January, 1997... Amelia came to the concert, bringing a beautiful carpet for me to sit upon to sing the raga section of our program. We soon began talking about collaboration as we shared a background in and devotion to Indian Classical music practice. Amelia had undergone years of training in the Drupad tradition and I had studied the Khayal tradition. Both of us had composed raga-based works and had merged this ancient tradition with our own particular creative work outside the Indian forms.

“We began our collaboration with a commission from Sounds Bazaar, led by UK composer/performer, Francis Silkstone. I wrote a suite of pieces. ‘Tarana In Hindol’, heard on this recording, was the concluding work. Silkstone plays the Baroque violin, Tatty Theo the Baroque cello and Bhavani Shakar the mridangam (South Indian drum). Later on, when I was in Gmünden, Switzerland, Amelia joined me for our first duo rehearsals where we began to work out material together that we performed in a subsequent series of concerts in Montefalco, Udine, and Padua in 2005 and 2006.

“I greatly admire Amelia’s artistry. She is one of the most expressive, powerful and deeply emotional voices in contemporary music.” ---Terry Riley, soundohm.com

This published material between Terry Riley And Amelia Cuni - The Lion's Throne (2019), was taken from live recordings (no recorded applauses) in the United Kingdom and Italy in between 1999 / 2006 and showcases both Riley's and Amelia Cuni's connection with Classical Indian music and its juxtaposition with modern Western canons and tunings.

The Lion's Throne is a 5 track album, its first three tracks ( Lion's Throne, Arica & Crazy World) are piano/vocals based compositions. Their surprise and thrill beyond their enticing transmuting piano structures relies on the female/male counterpointing vocal patterns and their respective lyrical experimentation on ancient and modern texts.

The last 2 tracks are played on different instruments therefore written for a different style of music and a different vocal approach, which to put it in PA's category list of terms, fit easily in the (contemporary) Indo-Prog/Raga (less the Rock plus its rare experimental side, plus again the lyrical reinterpretentions on ancient and modern texts.), sub-genre.

As I listen to it my personal appreciation falls between my ever growing affection for voiceless/textless music (or of only certain vocal registers or texts) and my utter admiration for Mr. Riley's ever growing and challenging, as always original, musical language.

This recorded recollection of live encounters if anything wraps up pretty much Terry Riley's songwriting scopes and his relentless quest as contemporary composer and underlines Amelia Cuni's evident singing talent and on track four: Cantico her composer's one.

So, as I mentioned, not exactly my cup of tea, but it will be absurd to underrate it due to the same. ---admireArt, progarchives.com

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