Riley: In C

In the spring of 1972, composer Louis Andriessen and saxophonist Willem Breuker brought together musicians from improvised and from traditional music, at a historical and tumultuous concert in the Amsterdam Carré theatre.They became the Orkest de Volharding ("obstinacy", an ensemble of flute, 3 saxophones, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, horn, piano and bass) which has distinguished itself internationally in the field of new music, with over 300 works written for them.

Reich's City Life receives its first recording as scored for wind orchestra and authorised by the composer. It uses digital samplers among the instruments, triggering a wide variety of sound and speech samples, including car horns, air brakes, car alarms and many other sounds associated with the city.The use of the samplers extends the idea of using everyday sounds in music.

Kyle Gann felt that the most successful musical model for brass, reeds and piano was 1920s New Orleans jazz.The first movement of Sunken City is pure fun New Orleans Mardi Gras, a stylised portrait of the energy and harmonic language of the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Bix Beiderbecke.The much longer second movement is a kind of interrupted chaconne. Successive variations suggest stages related to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy: grief, outrage, nostalgia and acceptance.

In Street, Lang envisions what kind of music a hip, dynamic, no-nonsense street orchestra (like Volharding) might play 400 years ago if it were not founded by Louis Andriessen but by Sweelinck.

Workers Union was originally written for Volharding.This piece is a combination of individual freedom and severe discipline: its rhythm is exactly fixed; the pitch, on the other hand, is indicated only approximately, on a single-lined stave. It is difficult to play in an ensemble and to remain in step, sort of thing like organising and carrying on political action.

Unquestionably the founding work of minimalism,Terry Riley's In C challenges the standards of imagination, intellect, and musical ingenuity to which 'classical' music is held.The one page score contains neither specified instrumentation nor parts, its 53 motives are compact, presented without any counterpoint or evident form.The composer gave only spare instructions and no tempo.

Short Ride in a Fast Machine is a joyfully exuberant piece by John Adams.Volharding's artistic director Anthony Fumara adds a little extra with his own arrangement, which fits the ensemble like a glove. In nothing flat it functions as a breathtaking four-minute exclamation mark.

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, brightly orchestrated eastern flavored improvisations and compositions set the stage for the New Age movement that was to appear a decade or so later.

Born in the USA in 1935, Terry Riley, along with Steve Reich, Philip Glass and LaMonte Young, belongs to the pioneering generation of composers of minimalist and repetitive music. In C, written in 1964, is a kind of manifesto: consisting solely of 53 small cells (the score fits on a single page), this open work, which affords the performers considerable freedom as regards instrumentation and duration, is an open invitation to construct a long polyrhythmical tapestry in constant transformation, with swing vying with contemplation. Ictus offers a contemporary reading of a work that could be called the Ligeti-Remix; emphasis is placed on the fusion of tone-colours and the dramatic impact of the textures. Settled since 1994 in Brussels, Ictus is a contemporary music ensemble whose repertory covers a very broad stylistic range. This leading ensemble in Belgian musical life has an ever greater role on the international scene and regularly performs in the most important contemporary music festivals.

Terry Riley writes: " In C has been around for more than 1/2 my lifetime and is arguably the most performed piece of contemporary music in existence. I have had to live happily with its blessings and its curses even though its creation on a Spring night of 1964 took only a few hours to pen. The one page score was published on the original CBS Masterworks LP cover in 1968 so it immediately got into the public domain and performances started springing up everywhere from Russia to Japan to South Africa. There have been several diverse takes on this set of 53 patterns. The psychedelic Innocence that gave birth to this music has long since dissolved into the cyberworlds that rule the double 00's and yet it has somehow survived. It has not only survived but flourished as an anthem of triumph and liberté in this fantasia directed by Walter Boudreau, with the SMCQ and Raôul Duguay [recorded live in 1997]. This is a brilliant conception, I only wish I had thought of it myself!"

The new interpretation of Terry Riley's legendary minimalist piece "In C" - a coproduction of the European Music Project with the electronics duo zignorii++ - is neither a modern remix nor a historicizing reproduction of the first recording of the late 1960s. It rather realizes and exemplifies the work's structural content which is open to the future, thus transferring it to the year 2002. - A work of cult status!

The European Music Project was formed in 1995. Its members live in a number of European countries, where they work as soloists, teachers, or in leading positions in renowned symphony orchestras. The electronic arrangement and the production were the work of zignorii++, a collaboration by Joachim Glasstetter and Jürgen Grözinger, which grew out of very different scenes to create electronic realizations that fall between the concert hall, the sound installation, and the club scene.

This unusual collection is dedicated to a very popular style: minimalist music. The style has evolved from austere, almost strict repetition to a more varied and free approach to material and technique.

The set includes works for solo piano by most of the famous ‘minimalist’ composers covering three generations from Cage, through Riley and Glass to Adams and Nyman.