a multimedia saxophone performance event
Dorian Reeds (1964/2001) by Terry Riley/Bruce Connor
soprano saxophone, multiple tape delays and video
Live video stills from Dorian Reeds.
Program Notes
Excerpt from "The Parametric music of Terry Riley" by Keith Knox in Jazz Monthly, July 1967
[In Dorian Reeds Riley] achieves the drone by using what he calls "the time-lag, looping and phasing accumulator", which is essentially a roll of tape and two tape recorders. This gives echoes of blown notes of fixed delays, with decremental amplitudes, which Riley controls at times for unison effects. This sounds like a band of around a dozen soprano saxophones, many of them being well away from the microphone. An interesting feature is that the piece is broken into sections, differing in what I can only call mood. There is a jazz feeling of a far-out kind that outdates jazz as we know it today by a galaxial decade. Riley is far from the greatest saxophonist in the world by conventional standards but his soprano has the right sound and his handling of the strobe patterns is so good as to be alarming at times, including a section which, I think successfully, strobes over two drone periods while maintaining the pulse. Some of the multiple strobe patterns can give a remarkable feeling of assurance, thereby imparting calm. I am sure there are many among the new wave jazz enthusiasts who will find the exciting Dorian Reeds very easy to like.
About the Composer
Born in Colfax, California, Terry Riley studied at Shasta College, San Francisco State University, and the San Francisco Conservatory before earning an MA in composition at the University of California, Berkeley, studying with Seymour Shifrin and Robert Erickson. He was involved in the experimental San Francisco Tape Music Center working with Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros and Ramon Sender. His most influential teacher, however, was Pandit Pran Nath (1918-1996), a master of Indian classical voice, who also taught La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. Riley made numerous trips to India over the course of their association to study and to accompany him on tabla, tambura, and voice. Throughout the 1960s he traveled frequently around Europe as well, taking in musical influences and supporting himself by playing in piano bars, until he joined the Mills College faculty in 1971 to teach Indian classical music. Riley was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Music at Chapman University in 2007.
Also during the 1960s were the famous "All-Night Concerts", during which Riley performed mostly improvised music from evening until sunrise, using an old organ harmonium ("with a vacuum cleaner motor blower blowing into the ballasts") and tape-delayed saxophone. When he finally wanted a break, after hours of playing, he played back looped saxophone fragments recorded throughout the evening. For several years he continued to put on these concerts, to which people came with sleeping bags, hammocks, and their whole families.
Riley began his long-lasting association with the Kronos Quartet by meeting its founder, David Harrington, while at Mills. Over the course of his career Riley has composed 13 string quartets for the ensemble, in addition to other works. He wrote his first orchestral piece, Jade Palace, in 1991, and has continued to pursue that avenue, with several commissioned orchestral compositions following. Riley is also currently performing and teaching both as an Indian raga vocalist and as a solo pianist.