Kronos Quartet

"For a year David would come up to me in the hall and say, I hear string quartets in your music…Then he simply scheduled a piece with my name on it. So I made a tentative stab at writing something, and invited Kronos up to the ranch to try it out."
-Terry Riley, 1978

California composer Terry Riley launched what is now known as the Minimalist movement with his revolutionary classic In C in 1964. This seminal work provided a new concept in musical form based on interlocking repetitive patterns. Its impact was to change the course of 20th century music and its influence has been heard in the works of prominent composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams and in the music of rock groups such as The Who, The Soft Machine, Tangerine Dream, Curved Air and many others. Riley's hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric and brightly orchestrated eastern-flavored improvisations and compositions set the stage for the New Age movement that was to appear a decade or so later.

In 1970, Riley became a disciple of the revered North Indian Raga vocalist, Pandit Pran Nath and made the first of his numerous trips to India to study with the master. He appeared frequently in concert with the legendary singer as tampura, tabla and vocal accompanist over the next 26 years until Pran Nath's passing in 1996. He has been co-director, along with Sufi Murshid and Shabda Kahn, of the Chisti Sabri India music study tours since 1993. This yearly 2-week study program in India is designed to give students a deeper insight into Pran Nath's profound contributions to the classical music of India. Riley now regularly performs Raga as a vocalist along with his teaching seminars, recently appearing in concert with the great Zakir Hussein on tabla. In 1999 he performed Ragas at Delhi University (in a special concert arranged for the music department) and at the Shivratri festival in Delhi the same year.

While teaching at Mills College in Oakland in the 1970's he met David Harrington, founder and artistic director of the Kronos Quartet, and they began a long association that has so far produced 12 string quartets, a quintet Crows Rosary and a concerto for string quartet, The Sands, which was the Salzburg Festival's first-ever new music commission. Cadenza on the Night Plain was selected by both Time and Newsweek magazines as one of the 10 best classical albums of the year. The epic 5-quartet cycle Salome Dances for Peace was selected as the #1 Classical album of the year by USA Today and was nominated for a Grammy Award. More recently, Kronos commissioned and premiered the Three Requiem Quartets, written in 1998 and 1999. Performances of the third Requiem quartet, Requiem for Adam, received wide critical acclaim, and the piece is set for release on recording on Nonesuch Records this fall, marking a 20 year association for Riley and Kronos.

Riley's innovative first orchestral piece Jade Palace was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the 1990/1991 centennial celebration. It was premiered there by Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony. June Buddhas, for Chorus and Orchestra, based on Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, was commissioned by the Koussevitsky foundation in 1991. Some of the performers and ensembles who have commissioned and performed his works include: The Rova Saxophone Quartet, Array Music, Zeitgeist, the Steven Scott Bowed Piano Ensemble, The California E.A.R. unit; guitarists David Tanenbaum and the Assad brothers; the Abel Steinberg-Winant Trio, pianist Werner Bartschi and the Amati Quartet. From 1989 to 1993 he formed and lead the ensemble Khayal to perform works written for them. Riley regularly performs solo piano concerts of his works from the past 30 years. He also appears in duo concerts with Indian sitarist Krishna Bhatt, saxophonist George Brooks and Italian bassist Stefano Scodanibbio. In 1992, he formed the small theater company 'The Travelling-Avantt-Gaard' to perform the chamber opera The Saint Adolf Ring, based on the divinely mad drawings, poetry, writings and mathematical calculations of Adolf Woelfli, an early 20th century Swiss Artist who suffered from schizophrenia and created his entire output over a 35-year span while confined in a mental institution.

In 1999 he was commissioned by the Norwich Festival to compose a new work, What the River Said, which toured Britain with the UK-based group Sounds Bazaar, featuring the great drupad vocalist Amelia Cuni. Then followed a commission from the Kanagawa Foundation in Yokohama to create an evening length work for solo piano in microtonal tuning. The Dream, which received simultaneous premiers in Rome and in Yokohama performed by the composer. The new millennium began with a tour of a new band, Terry Riley and the All-Stars, which included George Brooks (saxophones), Tracy Silverman (violin and 6-string viola), Gyan Riley (guitar) and Stefano Scodanibbio (string bass), with the final concert launching the first New Sounds Live concert of the 21st Century at Merkin Hall. The recently completed piano concerto, Banana Humberto 2000, was commissioned and performed by the Paul Dresher Ensemble. Legendary artist Bruce Connor has commissioned a new solo cello piece, to be performed by former Kronos Quartet cellist Jean Jeanrenaud upon completion. Music for a new staging of Michael McClure's play, Josephine the Mouse Singer ran in February 2001 in San Francisco.

In May of 2000, Terry made his first tour of Russia with solo piano concerts at the Sergei Kuryokin Festival in Saint Petersburg and at the Moscow Conservatory and the Dom, a privately run contemporary music club.

Riley is currently at work on a set of 24 pieces for guitar and guitar ensemble called The Book of Abbeyozzud, and has recently completed a book of 4 pieces for piano, four hands. Y Bolanzero, for large guitar ensemble, and Assassin Reverie, for saxophone quartet, both premiered in the summer of 2001. A quintet for Kronos Quartet and Pipa virtuoso Wu Man, plus a new work for Kronos commissioned by NASA incorporating the sounds of the planets will be premiered in 2002.




More than two decades since their first meeting, during a residency at Mills College in Oakland in 1978, Kronos Quartet and Terry Riley continue to share in what has become a long and fruitful collaboration. It can be said that Riley's newest work for Kronos, Requiem for Adam, grew out of David Harrington's urging, more than two decades ago, that Riley explore written notation in his compositions, which he had abandoned in the 1960s.

The first piece Riley wrote for Kronos, G Song, became the basis for the major extended work Salome Dances for Peace. Cadenza on the Night Plain, commissioned by Kronos, contains a cadenza for each player that reflects some aspects of his or her personality. Kronos, who set out to obtain one quartet back in 1978, ended up finding in this collaboration a spirit and rehearsal method that serves as the basis of their ongoing work with composers.

Requiem for Adam, premiered in Amsterdam on June 28, 1999, is the last of the Three Requiem Quartets that Riley has written in recent years to commemorate the deaths of people close to the members of Kronos. (The first two works are Mario in Cielo and Lacyrmosa (Remembering Kevin). Requiem for Adam was composed in memory of Adam Harrington, son of David and Regan Harrington, who died while walking with his family on Mt. Diablo, California, on April 16, 1995, when a blood clot in his coronary artery caused his heart to fail. In Riley's words the work is "a deeply personal statement, a way of coming to terms with loss, a step in coping with grief…"

A similarly commemorative spirit lies behind The Philosopher's Hand, a solo piano piece composed spontaneously in memory of Riley's teacher Pandit Pran Nath, and featured on this recording in a performance by the composer.

Harrington has said that working with Riley totally transformed Kronos' sound. Riley's immersion throughout the 1970s in the study of the North Indian raga tradition, and specifically the work of the celebrated vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, inspired Kronos to reconsider their conditioned attitudes to basic performance issues. Riley had ideas about intonation and expression through bowing that pushed the Kronos players into a new realm of experimentation. "He didn't want vibrato, but he wanted it expressive," says Harrington. "It was very hard for us as a group, but eventually we arrived at a sound that was different from anything we had ever done before. There was a magical moment when the bow, rather than vibrato, became the major expressor of color. I think of composers as teachers, who can provide us with first-hand information in exploring the mysteries of their pieces."


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

California composer Terry Riley launched what is now known as the Minimalist movement with his revolutionary classic In C in 1964. This seminal work provided a new concept in musical form based on interlocking repetitive patterns. Its impact was to change the course of 20th century music and its influence has been heard in the works of prominent composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams and in the music of rock groups such as The Who, The Soft Machine, Tangerine Dream, Curved Air and many others. Riley's hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric and brightly orchestrated eastern-flavored improvisations and compositions set the stage for the New Age movement that was to appear a decade or so later.

In 1970, Riley became a disciple of the revered North Indian Raga vocalist, Pandit Pran Nath and made the first of his numerous trips to India to study with the master. He appeared frequently in concert with the legendary singer as tampura, tabla and vocal accompanist over the next 26 years until Pran Nath's passing in 1996. He has been co-director, along with Sufi Murshid and Shabda Kahn, of the Chisti Sabri India music study tours since 1993. This yearly 2-week study program in India is designed to give students a deeper insight into Pran Nath's profound contributions to the classical music of India. Riley now regularly performs Raga as a vocalist along with his teaching seminars, recently appearing in concert with the great Zakir Hussein on tabla. In 1999 he performed Ragas at Delhi University (in a special concert arranged for the music department) and at the Shivratri festival in Delhi the same year.

While teaching at Mills College in Oakland in the 1970's he met David Harrington, founder and artistic director of the Kronos Quartet, and they began a long association that has so far produced 12 string quartets, a quintet Crows Rosary and a concerto for string quartet, The Sands, which was the Salzburg Festival's first-ever new music commission. Cadenza on the Night Plain was selected by both Time and Newsweek magazines as one of the 10 best classical albums of the year. The epic 5-quartet cycle Salome Dances for Peace was selected as the #1 Classical album of the year by USA Today and was nominated for a Grammy Award. More recently, Kronos commissioned and premiered the Three Requiem Quartets, written in 1998 and 1999. Performances of the third Requiem quartet, Requiem for Adam, received wide critical acclaim, and the piece is set for release on recording on Nonesuch Records this fall, marking a 20 year association for Riley and Kronos.

Riley's innovative first orchestral piece Jade Palace was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the 1990/1991 centennial celebration. It was premiered there by Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony. June Buddhas, for Chorus and Orchestra, based on Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, was commissioned by the Koussevitsky foundation in 1991. Some of the performers and ensembles who have commissioned and performed his works include: The Rova Saxophone Quartet, Array Music, Zeitgeist, the Steven Scott Bowed Piano Ensemble, The California E.A.R. unit; guitarists David Tanenbaum and the Assad brothers; the Abel Steinberg-Winant Trio, pianist Werner Bartschi and the Amati Quartet. From 1989 to 1993 he formed and lead the ensemble Khayal to perform works written for them. Riley regularly performs solo piano concerts of his works from the past 30 years. He also appears in duo concerts with Indian sitarist Krishna Bhatt, saxophonist George Brooks and Italian bassist Stefano Scodanibbio. In 1992, he formed the small theater company 'The Travelling-Avantt-Gaard' to perform the chamber opera The Saint Adolf Ring, based on the divinely mad drawings, poetry, writings and mathematical calculations of Adolf Woelfli, an early 20th century Swiss Artist who suffered from schizophrenia and created his entire output over a 35-year span while confined in a mental institution.

In 1999 he was commissioned by the Norwich Festival to compose a new work, What the River Said, which toured Britain with the UK-based group Sounds Bazaar, featuring the great drupad vocalist Amelia Cuni. Then followed a commission from the Kanagawa Foundation in Yokohama to create an evening length work for solo piano in microtonal tuning. The Dream, which received simultaneous premiers in Rome and in Yokohama performed by the composer. The new millennium began with a tour of a new band, Terry Riley and the All-Stars, which included George Brooks (saxophones), Tracy Silverman (violin and 6-string viola), Gyan Riley (guitar) and Stefano Scodanibbio (string bass), with the final concert launching the first New Sounds Live concert of the 21st Century at Merkin Hall. The recently completed piano concerto, Banana Humberto 2000, was commissioned and performed by the Paul Dresher Ensemble. Legendary artist Bruce Connor has commissioned a new solo cello piece, to be performed by former Kronos Quartet cellist Jean Jeanrenaud upon completion. Music for a new staging of Michael McClure's play, Josephine the Mouse Singer ran in February 2001 in San Francisco.

In May of 2000, Terry made his first tour of Russia with solo piano concerts at the Sergei Kuryokin Festival in Saint Petersburg and at the Moscow Conservatory and the Dom, a privately run contemporary music club.

Riley is currently at work on a set of 24 pieces for guitar and guitar ensemble called The Book of Abbeyozzud, and has recently completed a book of 4 pieces for piano, four hands. Y Bolanzero, for large guitar ensemble, and Assassin Reverie, for saxophone quartet, both premiered in the summer of 2001. A quintet for Kronos Quartet and Pipa virtuoso Wu Man, plus a new work for Kronos commissioned by NASA incorporating the sounds of the planets will be premiered in 2002.