Biography
24 June 1935, Colfax, California, USA. A former ragtime pianist on San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, Riley forged an exceptional, avant garde minimalist style which pioneered the use of tape loops and a delay/feedback system. Having studied with fellow radical La Monte Young, he completed his revolutionary piece, ‘In C’, in 1964. Here, Riley’s piano part, the pulse, strikes a uniform tempo as an ensemble plays 53 separate figures. Each musician moves at his/her own pace and the composition is only complete when every player reaches figure 53. Riley found a more widespread audience with A Rainbow In Curved Air, which comprised two lengthy compositions, the title track and ‘Poppy Nogood And The Phantom Band’. Electric organ and electric harpsichord ebb and flow in cyclical patterns, creating a mood adopted by the Soft Machine, Brian Eno, Philip Glass and a host of new age practitioners. In 1970, Riley travelled to...
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