Last night in the YBCA (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) Forum space, Other Minds presented the opening concert of its 25th anniversary season. Executive & Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian observed that this was the same space that was used for Other Minds’ first concert, making last night somewhat of a homecoming event. The program was devoted entirely to the music of Terry Riley, who served on the first Other Minds Board of Directors and has figured significantly in those qualities of “otherness” that have distinguished Other Minds concerts over the following quarter century.
Gloria Cheng and Terry Riley at the keyboard (from the Facebook Event page for last night’s concert)
The first half of the program consisted entirely of solo compositions played by Gloria Cheng. She began with Riley’s two earliest works, dating from 1958 and 1959, and devoted most of the time to the five pieces in the seventh book of works that Riley has entitled The Heaven Ladder. Riley himself player three solo pieces after the intermission, and he was then joined by Cheng to give a four-hand performance of “Cheng Tiger Growl Roar,” which he composed for her. Both Cheng and Riley provided the notes for the program book, making this a thoroughly personal recital in just about every way.
Riley’s earliest pieces were written when most of his time at the piano was devoted to playing the music of Arnold Schoenberg. This marked a move away from his previous interest in “rebellious” composers like Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud. Schoenberg’s music made for an entirely new experience for Riley, not only for its lack of a tonal center but also for its approach to prosody that often made the very concept of phrase structure as ambiguous as its “emancipated” dissonances. It is not difficult to recognize the presence of Schoenberg in Riley’s own phrase structures, but one is just as aware of how Riley engaged those structures with a different (and unique) underlying logic. It is particularly worth noting Riley’s own observation that the music grew out of listening for the right sounds without taking into account the grammatical constraints that guided Schoenberg’s own approach to atonality.
The program then leapt from the Fifties to the Nineties with “The Walrus in Memoriam.” Riley’s rhetoric has shifted to another one of his past influences, that of ragtime. The music was intended as a memorial for John Lennon with “I Am the Walrus” underlying (usually subtly, rather than explicitly) the thematic material. This was then followed by the five Heaven Ladder pieces.
Riley noted that these were the first piano pieces written out in their entirety since his two Schoenberg-inspired compositions. During the intervening 35 years, his music-making at the keyboard drew heavily on memory and improvisation, very much in the spirit of past jazz piano masters. While she was playing from the pages of Riley’s notations, Cheng’s performance still reverberated with gestures of spontaneity. Riley’s program notes suggest that each of the pieces has its own unique inspiration and resulting personality; and there is something touching in the way the set is framed by music for his twin grandchildren, opening with the “Bear Dance” of grandson Misha and concluding with a lullaby for granddaughter Simone.
Following the intermission, Riley preceded the two pieces listed on the program with what seemed to be an improvisation. On the basis of what he said (not very clearly), the music may have been based on an earlier organ piece entitled “The Bull.” The two pieces listed in the program, “Simply M…” and “Requiem for Wally,” were both memorial pieces. The “Wally” of the second piece was ragtime pianist Wally Rose; and the music was particularly notable for how Riley could work polyrhythmic grammar into traditional ragtime rhetoric.
Finally, “Chang Tiger Growl Roar” took its title from the initials of its two performers. It consisted of four movements, one for each word in the title but not in the same order. Rather, the “Cheng titles,” “Growl” and “Cheng” began the set; and Riley’s words, “Tiger” and Roar,” concluded it. Each of these pieces amounted to an engagingly playful gesture, suggesting that the acts of two friends making music together always transcends any of the marks set down in paper to document that music.
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