If you haven't heard, they played Terry Riley's In C, the breakthrough work of minimalism, at Carnegie Hall last Friday night.
Justin Davidson in New York Magazine anticipating the event:
A piano tolls high C’s for an uninterrupted hour, while underneath a varied ensemble interweaves pattern with burbling pattern. The music evokes no journey, produces no tension, excites no expectations, requires no relief. To sit up seems aesthetically incorrect.
...
David Harrington, a founding violinist of the Kronos Quartet, has assembled a large and disparate ensemble of musicians from several generations, united in reverence for this work. “All egos will be checked at the front door, and we’ll just start experimenting,” Harrington says. Expect a disciplined be-in.
And then Steve Smith's New York Times' review after it happened:
Emphasizing a communitarian spirit, the Kronos Quartet violinist David Harrington gathered 70 diverse performers, including the composers Philip Glass and Osvaldo Golijov, jazz improvisers, rock musicians, two vocal groups, a recorder quartet, a koto trio and players of invented implements.
...
Some listeners rocked in place. Others sprawled in their seats, adrift; one hammered the pulse into his palm with a rolled-up program. At the end, after 98 minutes of muddy thunder and hypnotic bliss, Mr. Riley and his ad hoc community received a tumultuous ovation.
1 comment:
Surely it was a fascinating must-to-be-heard concert with such great and legendary performers as Philip Glass, Kronos Quartet, Morton Subotnick, and of course Terry himself. I hope an audio or video recording of the performance will be released in future, because very limited amount of people of the world could be present at Carnegie Hall to hear a rare performance of one of the most influential pieces of all history.
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