Terry Riley “Organum for Stefano” (I Dischi di Angelica, 2022)

During these days I’m a little excited since on September 18, 2022 Terry Riley will perform in a small church in Milano with an ensemble of chosen musicians, and I have heard the concert will last 2 hours and a half. So it came to my mind that this year I Dischi di Angelica, a label devoted to document the most important concerts of the Angelica Festival, has released an album of solo organ and voice by Riley himself, an important album since it is devoted to a departured collaborator of the composer: the Italian excellent cellist Stefano Scodanibbio.

Terry Riley started playing piano during the 1950s studying in various conservatories, and during the following decade he toured in Europe with some jazz musicians. But even if Riley was keen on improvising, he wasn’t keen on closing himself into a given format, and wanted to experiment something different, something more. That’s why with his friend La Monte Young he gave life to the first performances of what was called after ‘minimalism’: a music made of musical cells repeated through a phase shifting in order that with the proceeding of the time the music itself would become slightly different from what it was at first.

Later Riley took singing lessons with the master of indian music Pandit Pran Nath, doing many tour with him at the voice and tablas. In 1968 and 1969 Riley released through Columbia Records his most famous albums, highly influentials not only in contemporary music, but also on rock music, electronic music and a vast land of unclassified sonorous objects. Riley was aware of the music around him, and as far as jazz he praised the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Gil Evans and Charles Mingus as the most influential figures on his own music, even if indian music, that at least was so important for Davis and Coltrane between many other genres, is clearly audible between his many sonic roots.

Luckily enough we had the opportunity to hear this Organum For Stefano on record, since I’m told that the real concert was affected by a bad acoustics especially in the side aisles. But the recorded performance is excellent, so the document of that particular night maintains his crystalline purity, his moving intention and beauty. Organum, titled from the instrument Riley played that night in the church, is partly a composition and partly full of improvised parts.

Obviously if Terry Riley is so highly praised, it is because his music has evolved during the years and not only he and his friend La Monte Young had an important role in constructing the sound of some of the very first pieces of the seminal band Velvet Underground and other peculiar ‘rock’ bands, but differently from other mimimalist composers they didn’t rest on their laurels, so to speak, but emerged as innovators even when they had to abandon the musical shapes they forged.

The first 3 minutes movement is introduced by a series of organ drones, evolving into a solemn melody. Something many lovers of rock music from the Seventies would like to listen as an introduction to some granitic riff of guitar (as The Who did in their Baba O’Riley). But it’s not the case: the music evolves in the 8 minutes second movement, where Riley accompanies the organ with the voice and we can clearly hear his Pran Nath-influences. India is alive in this performance, and we can see it as in a beautiful sonorous landscape depicted by the voice and the organ for us all.

Not having seen the sheet of this music I cannot know for sure what part has been written and what have been improvised, but I can guess that the melodic chant was the point of departure for the successive sonorous manipulations. I imagine you the listener lost in this beautiful song for a long time collaborator as Stefano Scodanibbio was, and so I can believe that the people who will enjoy this album will lost themselves into the depth of the feelings Riley has experienced while playing for his friend.

It will be like that for all the third 8 minutes part, featuring some kind of fugue-like movement, while the fourth, lasting 11 minutes, is full of reference to carnatic music and singing again. This blending of different traditions, from east to west, is a characteristic of many music from the Seventies. In a recent interview to Giampiero Cane, an important and interesting Italian critic author of the seminal book Canto Nero, Riley himself have told that in that period music was a tool to expand the consciousness, while during the decades after it was all locked inside academia or the media trends.

The 3 minutes of the fifth movement see the organ dominate in a beautiful melancholic but again solemn hymn, while the last 7 minutes are a hint at the hystorical minimalism, with two different melodies, composed both by few sonic cells but the second becoming here and there a drone, are intertwining the one into the other. The effect is highly dramatic, and it is the best closing for a farewell piece of music. Obviously the textures implied here are of different consistencies, and this add to the music another level of tension.

Don’t miss this record, and if you’re in Italy don’t miss Terry Riley live on September 18, 2022 at the Churc of San Vito al Giambellino, with the Orchestra Cantelli and the participants to Riley’s workshop of collective improvisation. I imagine it will be a intriguing night and another step into the career of a master musician in his own right. Possibly this tuesday I’ll report you another concert, that of Rob Mazurek again in Milan presenting a new project.