Composer and performer Terry Riley is one of the founders of music’s Minimalist movement. His early works, notably In C (1964), pioneered a form in Western music based on structured interlocking repetitive patterns. Riley’s one-page score for In C invites interpretation in the extreme: any kind of instrument and any number of performers. Choreographer Sasha Waltz takes up the challenge — and the open-ended possibilities.
Created through an experimental artistic process incorporating digital development and performance in 2021, Waltz’s In C comes to the BAM stage for its US premiere in this playful, expressive new work accompanied live by the electric Bang on a Can All-Stars, offering a dazzling interplay of structured improvisation and synchronicity that, like Riley’s music, sweeps audiences up on a journey toward the ecstatic.
Waltz observes, “the score of In C consists of fifty-three musical phrases and reads like stage directions for musicians. The thought of translating these detailed instructions into dance through a choreographic exploration of the music appealed to me. The result is an experimental system of fifty-three movement phrases for a structured improvisation with clear rules and laws. The length of the piece remains variable, as does the number of musicians and dancers.”
The influence of Riley’s hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric, brightly orchestrated Eastern-flavored improvisations and compositions is heard across the span of contemporary and popular music.
Details
April 28-30 2022 US Choreographic Premiere
Long Play New Music Festival
Sasha Waltz & Guests
Bang On A Can All-Stars
Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY
For more information, please contact your local Wise Music Promotion Team. See Contact Us.
