Terry Riley's In C: 60th Anniversary Concert
Friday, 8 November 2024 Time: 7.30pm
American composer Terry Riley's 1964 composition In C is the first major work in the musical movement that became American minimalism, a movement later dominated by composers Steve Reich, Philip Glass and others.
In C consists of 53 short numbered musical phrases which performers play in sequence repeating each phrase at their discretion before moving to the next, although the musicians are asked in the score to try to stay within two to three phrases of each other. The tempo of the piece is led by "the pulse" on piano or pitched percussion (such as xylophone or marimba).
The piece has no set duration; performances can last as little as fifteen minutes or as long as several hours, although Riley indicates "performances normally average between 45 minutes and an hour and a half." The number of performers may also vary between any two performances.
On Friday 8th November 2024, almost exactly 60 years on from the original performance at the San Francisco Tape Music Center which featured Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Morton Subotnick and others, musicians and guests of Liverpool Hope University Music Department will join together to perform this landmark of minimalist music.