Sarah Cahill: A Piano Party for Terry Riley at 80
FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 2015

New works composed in celebration of Terry Riley’s eightieth birthday by Samuel Carl Adams, Pauline Oliveros, Gyan Riley, Evan Ziporyn, Christine Southworth, Danny Clay, Dylan Mattingly, Luciano Chessa, Elena Ruehr, and Keeril Makan.

June 24, 2015 is the eightieth birthday year of composer-pianist Terry Riley, who has had a profound influence on generations of composers and musicians. A Piano Party for Terry Riley at 80 pays tribute to Riley’s enduring impact with the premieres of new solo piano pieces written in honor of his eightieth birthday by composers ranging in age from 25 to 82, combined with some of Riley’s own dazzling piano compositions. Sarah Cahill has worked closely with Terry Riley since 1997, when she commissioned his four-hand piece Cinco de Mayo for an all-piano festival at Cal Performances celebrating Henry Cowell’s hundredth birthday. She commissioned four more four-hand pieces from Riley, toured with him in Edinburgh and Glasgow, performed in his 70th birthday concert at Royce Hall at UCLA, and commissioned a solo piece, Be Kind to One Another, which NPR listed on its 100 Best Songs of 2013, and MSNBC included on its Top Ten Political Songs of 2013.