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December 15, 2011, 7:30 pm
MIT KRESGE AUDITORIUM
47 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA

Legendary composer Terry Riley – the father of minimalism – makes a rare Boston-area appearance at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium on Thursday, December 15, 7:30 pm, in performance with Boston’s own Gamelan Galak Tika.  This first-time collaboration - melding world music, jazz, electronics, and the experimental – climaxes with the world premiere of Riley’s amazing new work, White Space Conflict, for gamelan, guitar, keyboard, saxophone, electronics and voice.  The program also includes Riley performing new solo works for piano and pipe organ, and Galak Tika performing traditional Balinese music.  Also featured is virtuoso guitarist Gyan Riley, and Bang on a Can All-star Evan Ziporyn on clarinet and saxophone.
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Gamelan Galak Tika was founded in 1993 by composer Evan Ziporyn, and devotes itself to traditional and new works for Balinese gamelan orchestra.  A mainstay of the Boston music scene, Galak Tika has developed a national and international reputation through appearances at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Bali International Arts Festival.  This new work continues its legacy of collaborations with artists including Wilco drummer Glenn Kotché, the Kronos Quartet, master pipa-ist Wu Man, and numerous Balinese & American composers.

Riley’s new work, White Space Conflict, fulfills a long-time dream:  “Composer Lou Harrison, whose music I love, always told me I should write for gamelan.  I never got to do it while he was alive, and it’s great to finally get the opportunity.”   For Galak Tika “it’s the chance to work with a legend,” says Berklee composer Ramon Castillo, a long-standing member of the group.

Riley’s unique keyboard compositions and improvisations, a seamless blend of styles ranging from stride piano to bebop, raga, and mind-boggling phasing and looping, have thrilled audiences worldwide.  Of his 2009 solo organ performance in Disney Hall, LA Times Mark Swed wrote, “He was in inspired form…Bach’s organ and Delta blues are not, in Riley universe, separate genres.  Once he began his ricocheting rhythms, he covered the room in a mind altering buzz.” Matching these rhythms ricochet for ricochet will be Galak Tika’s traditional Balinese offerings, a sampling of what the NY Times Anne Midgette hailed as “an exuberant blast of metal fireworks.”

Also featured is virtuoso guitarist Gyan Riley, the composer’s son, whose solo record Melismantra was praised as “…never less than enthralling” by Oakland Magazine; and Evan Ziporyn, whose work as a clarinetist and composer is well-known to Boston-area audiences.  The concert is sponsored by MIT’s Music & Theater Arts, with additional support for White Space Conflict from the LEF Foundation.