Cantaloupe Music Announces
Terry Riley: Autodreamographical Tales
Terry Riley with the Bang on a Can All-Stars
Release Date: March 25, 2022
First Single “Long Bus Ride” Out Now
Listen and Preorder Now: https://listen.lt/TerryRileyLongBusRide
Full album downloads available to press on request
Upcoming Performances of Autodreamographical Tales:
Big Ears Festival, March 24-27, 2022 – Knoxville, TN
www.cantaloupemusic.com | www.bangonacan.org
New York, NY — Terry Riley and the Bang on a Can All-Stars present a new album on Cantaloupe Music, to be released on March 25, 2022. Autodreamographical Tales features new arrangements of Riley’s iconic set of dream diary songs, with music about such evergreen subjects as vegetables, public transit, cannabis, and institutional classism in America. The first track from the album, “Long Bus Ride,” is available now, along with album pre-orders, here: https://listen.lt/TerryRileyLongBusRide
Playful, eloquent, intimate and existentially cool, Terry Riley’s Autodreamographical Tales is a musical dream diary — a no-holds-barred journey into the creative unconscious, rendered with a compelling joie de vivre by one of the most influential composers of our time. Each of these ten songs offers an uncommonly special connection with Riley, who narrates, sings, and adds his signature minimalist piano filigrees to a sprawling narrative that can turn poetic, picaresque, or downright kaleidoscopic.
Backed by the ever-flexible Bang on a Can All-Stars, Riley challenges the ensemble by digging deep into a wide range of musical flavors that includes free jazz, blues, rock, pop and classical. And through the vivid storytelling of "Long Bus Ride” and “Zucchini,” to the Jabberwockyan wordplay of “Science Fiction” and the raucous confessional “Cannabis,” Riley also bends and stretches the very limits of language — conveying a multivalent message for these times that is pithy, uplifting and powerful.
The Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform Autodreamographical Tales at the Big Ears Festival (March 24-27, 2022; Knoxville, TN) as well as a program from their last Cantaloupe album, MEMORY GAME (2020) with Meredith Monk, a large-scale collaboration between her Vocal Ensemble & the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The All-Stars will also perform a selection of their pandemic solo commissions, composed for Bang on a Can’s series of Live Online Marathon performances in 2020-2021.
Terry Riley: Autodreamographical Tales
Cantaloupe Music
Release Date: March 25, 2022
Terry Riley with the Bang on a Can All-Stars
Terry Riley, vocals, piano, keyboards
Ashley Bathgate, cello
Robert Black, bass
Vicky Chow, piano and keyboards
David Cossin, drums and percussion
Mark Stewart, guitar
Ken Thomson, clarinet and bass clarinet
1. Dwarf – 2:42
2. Long Bus Ride – 1:42 – available now
3. See Them Out There – 2:40
4. The Miracle – 2:17
5. Zucchini – 3:00
6. Black Woman – 3:52
7. The Faquir – 7:27
8. The War On The Poor – 8:30
9. Cannabis – 11:26
10. Science Fiction – 8:26
About Terry Riley: California Composer Terry Riley launched what is now known as the Minimalist movement with his revolutionary classic In C in 1964 — a seminal work that provided a new concept in musical form based on interlocking repetitive patterns. The work’s impact was to change the course of 20th-century music, and its influence has been heard in the works of such prominent composers as Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams, as well as the music of rock groups like The Who, The Soft Machine, Tangerine Dream, Curved Air and many more. Riley’s hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric, brightly orchestrated eastern-flavored improvisations and compositions set the stage for the prevailing interest in a new tonality.
Besides his introduction of repetition into Western music motifs, Riley also masterminded early experiments in tape loops and delay systems, which left an indelible mark on the experimental music produced in his wake. Deeply influenced by the mantra-like repetition of Indian classical music as well as the modal scales and improvisation of jazz, recordings like 1969’s A Rainbow in Curved Air became landmarks, greatly influencing developments in electronic music as well as psychedelic and progressive rock. Subsequent works such as Shri Camel (1980) and The Harp of New Albion (1986) focused on just intonation. Riley has collaborated extensively with the Kronos Quartet, with notable works include the Grammy-nominated Salome Dances for Peace (1989) and The Cusp of Magic (2008). Riley’s 21st-century works include piano concerto Banana Humberto (2008), the long-form synthesizer composition Aleph (2012), and collaborations with his son, Gyan Riley, including the 2017 film score Hochelaga, Land of Souls.
While teaching at Mills, he met David Harrington, founder and leader of the Kronos Quartet, and began a long association that has so far produced 13 string quartets, a quintet, Crows Rosary, and a concerto for string quartet, The Sands (1990), which was the Salzburg Festival’s first new music commission. Sun Rings (2003), a 2-hour multimedia piece for choir, visuals and space sounds, and commissioned by NASA, was released by Nonesuch in 2019.
Riley turned 73 in 2008, and the year was marked by two major projects: Cusp of Magic, with Kronos Quartet, and the more playful Banana Humberto with the Paul Dresher Ensemble. In 2015, in honor of Riley’s 80th birthday, Kronos Quartet released One Earth, One People, One Love, a five-CD box set of their recordings of the composer’s work. In 2017, Terry and Gyan Riley composed the score for the Canadian historical drama film Hochelaga, Land of Souls, which was subsequently nominated for Best Score at the Prix Iris and Canadian Screen Awards. For more information, please visit www.terryriley.net.
About the Bang on a Can All-Stars: Formed in 1992, the Bang on a Can All-Stars are recognized worldwide for their ultra-dynamic live performances and recordings of today’s most innovative music. Freely crossing the boundaries between classical, jazz, rock, world and experimental music, this six-member amplified ensemble has consistently forged a distinct category-defying identity, taking music into uncharted territories. Performing each year throughout the U.S. and internationally, the All-Stars have shattered the definition of what concert music is today.
Together, the All-Stars have worked in unprecedented close collaboration with some of the most important and inspiring musicians of our time, including Steve Reich, Ornette Coleman, Burmese circle drum master Kyaw Kyaw Naing, Tan Dun, DJ Spooky, and many more. The group’s celebrated projects include their landmark recordings of Brian Eno’s ambient classic Music for Airports and Terry Riley’s In C, as well as live performances with Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Don Byron, Iva Bittova, Thurston Moore, Owen Pallett and others. The All-Stars were awarded Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year and have been heralded as “the country’s most important vehicle for contemporary music” by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Current and recent project highlights include a recording of legendary composer/performer Meredith Monk’s MEMORY GAME; Road Trip, an immersive and visually stunning concert collaboratively-composed by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe to commemorate the 30+ year journey of Bang on a Can; the touring performances and recording of Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winning Anthracite Fields for the All-Stars and guest choir, the record release of Wolfe’s acclaimed Steel Hammer, featuring Trio Mediaeval, plus a moving theatrically staged collaboration with SITI Company and director Anne Bogart; Field Recordings, a major multi-media project and CD/DVD now featuring 30 commissioned works by Tyondai Braxton, Mira Calix, Anna Clyne, Bryce Dessner, Florent Ghys, Michael Gordon, Jóhann Jóhannsson, David Lang, Christian Marclay, Steve Reich, Todd Reynolds, Julia Wolfe, and more; the Lincoln Center Festival 2017 world premiere of Cloud River Mountain, a new collaboration featuring Chinese superstar singer Gong Linna; the world premiere performance and recording of Steve Reich’s 2×5 including a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall, and much more. With a massive repertoire of works written specifically for the group’s distinctive instrumentation and style of performance, the All-Stars have become a genre in their own right. The All-Stars record on Cantaloupe Music and have released past recordings on Sony, Universal and Nonesuch.
About Bang on a Can: Bang on a Can is dedicated to making music new. Since its first Marathon concert in 1987, Bang on a Can has been creating an international community dedicated to innovative music, wherever it is found. With adventurous programs, it commissions new composers, performs, presents, and records new work, develops new audiences, and educates the musicians of the future. Bang on a Can is building a world in which powerful new musical ideas flow freely across all genres and borders. Bang on a Can plays “a central role in fostering a new kind of audience that doesn’t concern itself with boundaries. If music is made with originality and integrity, these listeners will come.” (The New York Times)
Bang on a Can has grown from a one-day New York-based Marathon concert (on Mother’s Day in 1987 in a SoHo art gallery) to a multi-faceted performing arts organization with a broad range of year-round international activities. “When we started Bang on a Can, we never imagined that our 12-hour marathon festival of mostly unknown music would morph into a giant international organization dedicated to the support of experimental music, wherever we would find it,” write Bang on a Can Co-Founders Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. “But it has, and we are so gratified to be still hard at work, all these years later. The reason is really clear to us – we started this organization because we believed that making new music is a utopian act – that people needed to hear this music and they needed to hear it presented in the most persuasive way, with the best players, with the best programs, for the best listeners, in the best context. Our commitment to changing the environment for this music has kept us busy and growing, and we are not done yet.”
In March 2020, when the pandemic began, Bang on a Can responded with the Live Online concert series including its signature Marathon concerts. With this online series, Bang on a Can has been able to support composers and performers and engage audiences throughout the pandemic shutdown. Other in-person programs include two festivals LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA and LONG PLAY, current projects include The People’s Commissioning Fund, a membership program to commission emerging composers; the Bang on a Can All-Stars, who tour to major festivals and concert venues around the world every year; recording projects; the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, a professional development program for young composers and performers led by today’s pioneers of experimental music; Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can’s extreme street band that offers mobile performances re-contextualizing unusual music; Found Sound Nation, a new technology-based musical outreach program now partnering with the State Department of the United States of America to create OneBeat, a revolutionary, post-political residency program that uses music to bridge the gulf between young American musicians and young musicians from developing countries; cross-disciplinary collaborations and projects with DJs, visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers and more. Each new program has evolved to answer specific challenges faced by today’s musicians, composers and audiences, in order to make innovative music widely accessible and wildly received. Bang on a Can’s inventive and aggressive approach to programming and presentation has created a large and vibrant international audience made up of people of all ages who are rediscovering the value of contemporary music. Bang on a Can has also recently launched its new digital archive, CANLAND, an extensive archive of its recordings, videos, posters, program books, and more. Thirty-three years of collected music and associated ephemera have been digitized and archived online and is publicly accessible in its entirety at www.canland.org. For more information about Bang on a Can, please visit www.bangonacan.org.
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