Terry Riley
Terry Riley’s career as composer/performer has spanned over 6 decades starting in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 50’s up to the present time in Japan. He has written in many classical ensemble formats, solo guitar, guitar duo ,solo piano, piano 4-hands. piano quintet, piano, violin and percussion, sting trio, string quartet, cello octet, saxophone quartet, string quartet and synthesizer, sax quartet and synthesizer, a cappella mixed choir, children choir with accordion and harp, children choir with toy pianos, brass instruments and percussion and a wind/string sextet to name a few.
Terry has written for large orchestra, a violin concerto, an electric violin concerto, a concerto for violin 2 guitars and harp, a piano concerto for electro acoustic ensemble and an organ concerto. He has written over 24 works for Kronos Quartet including a string quartet concerto soon to be released with the Cleveland symphony. He has scored or collaborated on scores for 4 major films.
Terry has worked with notable jazz musicians Don Cherry, Chet Baker. Rock musicians John Cale and Daevid Allen and the electronic duo, Matmos.
In the Western Classical world he has worked with Leonard Slatkin, John Adams, Cameron Carpenter, Giancarlo Guererro, Tracy Silverman and Krista Finney.
He has played dozens of concerts with his son, the brilliant guitarist and composer, Gyan Riley. The two recently collaborated on the film score by François Girard, “Hochelaga”.
Most notable is the lifelong association with LaMonte Young who he first met in 1960 at the University of California in Berkeley, California. Terry was one of the members of LaMonte’s Theater of Eternal Music in the mid 60s’s in New York and they both became disciples of the legendary Indian vocalist, Pandit Pran Nath.
He has performed in many of the world's most prestigious concert halls, including Carnegie Hall,Town Hall and Lincoln Center in New York. Queen Elizabeth Hall in London the National Center in Mumbai, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Salle Pleyel in Paris.
Terry has made numerous trips to India where he has studied, taught and performed Indian classical music. He has performed and recorded with Indian musicians, Pandit Pran Nath, Krishna Bhatt, Zakir Hussein, Nayan Ghosh and Talvin Singh. He is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship, an NEA grant and a Fromm Foundation award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His music is published by G. Schirmer.
Visiting artist, Creative Music Online 2021, Creative Music Intensive Summer 2022, Creative Music Intensive 2023
Photograph by Sara Miyamoto
