Minimal Music Festival 2026 - Terry Riley 90th Birthday Celebration

There are musical works that you simply must hear live in your lifetime, and tonight, we have not one, but two such classics on the programme. Terry Riley is a minimal music icon whose idiosyncratic blend of improvisation, electronica and drone music has had a massive influence on the music of our time. Riley recently turned ninety, and we are celebrating this with his ground-breaking masterpieces, In C and A Rainbow in Curved Air. The New York-based Bang on a Can All-Stars are the dream performers for this occasion.

In 1964, Terry Riley jotted down some fifty mini-fragments on a single A4 sheet of paper: this was the score for the pioneering In C. Because of the interpretive freedom given to the musicians, no two renditions of the piece are exactly alike. Five years later, Riley struck gold again with A Rainbow in Curved Air: an album of improvisations and tape loops drawing from jazz and Indian music, which would go on to influence generations of ambient, fusion and electronic musicians. Tonight’s arrangement comes courtesy of Riley’s son, Gyan.

Arrangör: Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ