The late-life creativity of Terry Riley is cause for celebration in troubled times, and this release by California's Del Sol Quartet makes a fine place to start exploring it. As with Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Riley's musical language has evolved since his days as the West Coast pioneer of minimalism, but a basic personality has remained constant. Dark Queen Mantra, performed here with Riley's son, Gyan Riley, on guitar, is flavored by Spanish idioms, but is in no way a neoclassical work. If you had to compare it to ...
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The late-life creativity of Terry Riley is cause for celebration in troubled times, and this release by California's Del Sol Quartet makes a fine place to start exploring it. As with Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Riley's musical language has evolved since his days as the West Coast pioneer of minimalism, but a basic personality has remained constant. Dark Queen Mantra, performed here with Riley's son, Gyan Riley, on guitar, is flavored by Spanish idioms, but is in no way a neoclassical work. If you had to compare it to anything, it would compare to Reich's Jewish-themed works, but really it is sui generis . You might sample the melodic "Goya with Wings" second movement, which was inspired by paintings of Francisco Goya. Mas Lugares (su madrigali di Monteverdi) by Italian Stefano Scodanibbio, a friend of Riley's, makes an unusually good pairing with Riley: it stands in the same relationship to Monteverdi as Riley does to his Spanish models. The finale, The Wheel & Mythic Birds Waltz (which is not...
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