TERRY RILEY - COMPOSERS AND COMMUNITY

"For a year David would come up to me in the hall and say, I hear string quartets in your music,"
says Terry Riley. "Then he simply scheduled a piece with my name on it. So I made a tentative
stab at writing something, and invited Kronos up to the ranch to try it out."—TR


Riley works in a remote studio in the Tahoe forest, several hours drive from San Francisco. Kronos set out to obtain one quartet, and ended up finding in this collaboration a spirit and rehearsal method that serves as the basis of their ongoing work with composers.

"It was just notes and measures, without expression," says Riley of G-Song. "I didn't even put in phrasing marks. Because I wanted to leave it open. Kronos was really great about this. They wanted to dig into the music and find out what was there."

"It's a community kind of feeling," says Jeanrenaud. "With Terry, we could try things out, without being judgmental at all. He created modular bars for us to play, and we would try these together, in different combinations. We even ended up making our own parts. It's the foundation of how we work together, this whole process of trial and error."

Riley also had ideas about pitch and expression that pushed the Kronos players beyond their training and into a new realm of experimentation. "He didn't want vibrato, but he wanted it expressive," says Harrington. "It was very hard for us as a group, but eventually we arrived at a sound that was different from anything we had ever done before. There was a magical moment when the bow, rather than vibrato, became the major expressor of color. That was one of the first times when Kronos really came together as a group. I think of composers as teachers, who can provide us with first-hand information in exploring the mysteries of their pieces."

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