Terry Riley

This CD brings together four seminal tape works of Terry Riley. The Gift music was performed in Paris 1963 by Chet Baker, with tape manipulations by Riley-- the first use of tape delay to fragment, attenuate, and return time, looping tape through twin-tape recorders. The Gift recordings, referred to often by Soft Machine members, is the precursor to the landmark that launched the minimalist movement In C. "Bird of Paradise" is a radical tape-manipulation work, the earliset known plundering that inspired Steve Reich's "It's Gonna Rain"-era phase recordings. "Mescalin Mix" is a tape-loop recording from 1960-62, partly inspired by Riley's experience with mescalin and the work he did with Richard Maxfield. For this recording, the tape-loops extended out Riley's window to a wine-bottle spindle in the yard; it was composed for choreographer Anna Halprin's The Three-Legged Stool. Concert for Two Pianos and Five Tape Recorders was recorded live at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus in 1960 with a humorous broadcast narrative/play-by-play by Glenn Glasow. It was performed by Riley and La Monte Young.