A.V. Club: Best of the Decade

Artist Terry Riley

Terry Riley is a legendary composer whose work falls somewhere between the avant-garde and the just perfectly natural. A big presence in California starting in the ’60s, he made early musique-concrete pieces with tape machines (and, as might be reasonably deduced in the case of “Mescalin Mix,” drugs). His most lasting piece is In C, a minimalist masterwork from 1964 that draws a lot of drama out of rigid rules.

Updated 04/16/2009

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