Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley

Submitted by nonesuch on
genre
Release Date
DescriptionExcerpt

Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley, released in honor of the composer's 80th birthday, includes a new recording of the title piece, one of Kronos and Riley’s first collaborations, as well as a previously unreleased recording of Lacrymosa – Remembering Kevin and Cry of a Lady (originally released on A Thousand Thoughts) and G Song and Cadenza on the Night Plain (both originally released on 25 Years). Pitchfork says the album is "a necessary addition to the catalog," calling the new recording of the title track "a marvel."

Description

In honor of groundbreaking American composer Terry Riley’s 80th birthday, Nonesuch Records releases One Earth, One People, One Love: Kronos Plays Terry Riley—a five-disc box set of four albums of his work composed for, and performed by, his longtime friends and champions Kronos Quartet—as well as a new disc called Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley, on June 23, 2015, in North America and July 10 for the rest of the world. Riley and Kronos met more than 35 years ago, and since then, the quartet has commissioned 27 works from him, more than from any other composer in the group’s history.

Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector includes a new recording of the title piece, which was Riley’s first for Kronos, as well as previously unreleased recordings of Lacrymosa – Remembering Kevin and One Earth, One People, One Love from Sun Rings; Cry of a Lady (originally released on A Thousand Thoughts); and G Song and Cadenza on the Night Plain (both originally released on 25 Years). Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector also is available for individual purchase. 

Kronos Quartet continues its celebration of its friend with the KRONOS PRESENTS: Terry Riley Festival, June 26–28 at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco. The festival, the first project in the new KRONOS PRESENTS series, features some of Riley’s most significant and rarely-performed works, plus several world premieres composed in his honor, with special guest performers including Zakir Hussain, Wu Man, Riley’s son Gyan, and Riley himself.

Kronos’ violinist, founder, and artistic director David Harrington says of the Quartet’s remarkably fruitful relationship with Terry Riley, which began in the late 1970s at Mills College in Oakland, California: “There is no other composer who has added so many new musical words to our vocabulary, words from so many corners of the musical world. Terry introduced Kronos to Pandit Pran Nath, Zakir Hussain, Bruce Connor, La Monte Young, Anna Halprin, Hamza El Din, Jon Hassell, and Gil Evans.” He continues, “In a crazed world laced with violence and destruction he has consistently been a force for peace. Through his gentle leadership a path forward has emerged. Terry sets the standard for what it means to be a musician in our time.”

Riley says of his 35 years of working with Kronos: “Each of our projects together was launched by conversations with both David and me riffing on ideas. I always came away from these planning sessions feeling exhilarated, and these energies would soon get my pen moving toward a melody or a rhythmic pattern—or, in the case of Salome Dances for Peace, a five-quartet cycle. David has this gift, a unique catalytic effect on so many collaborators. Because of this gift, we have this astounding body of work created for Kronos over the past four decades.”

Composer and performer Terry Riley is one of the founders of music’s Minimalist movement. His early works, notably In C (1964), pioneered a form in Western music based on structured interlocking repetitive patterns. The influence of Riley’s hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric, brightly orchestrated Eastern-flavored improvisations and compositions is heard across the span of contemporary and popular music. Performers who have commissioned and/or played his works include: Kronos Quartet, Rova Saxophone Quartet, ARTE Quartet, Array Music, Zeitgeist, Steven Scott Bowed Piano Ensemble, John Zorn, Sarah Cahill, California E.A.R. Unit, guitarist David Tanenbaum, electric violinist Tracy Silverman, drummer George Marsh, bassist Bill Douglass, the Assad brothers, cello octet Conjunto Ibérico, Crash Ensemble, Abel Steinberg-Winant Trio, pianists Werner Bartschi and Gloria Cheng, Calder Quartet, Arditti Quartet, Amati Quartet, Alter Ego, Sounds Bazaar, Paul Dresher, singer Amelia Cuni, Bang-on-a-Can All Stars, and guitarist Gyan Riley.

For more than 40 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagining the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than 50 recordings, collaborating with many of the world’s most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning over 850 works and arrangements for string quartet. A Grammy winner, Kronos is also the only recipient of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize. With a staff of 11, the non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) manages all aspects of Kronos’ work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours and home-season performances, and education programs. In 2015/16, a new 5-year commissioning and education initiative, Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, will commission 50 new works (from 25 women and 25 men) designed to train students and emerging professionals, and be distributed online for free.

ProductionCredits

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Produced by Judith Sherman

Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector
One Earth, One People, One Love
Recorded December 2014 at Skywalker Sound, a Lucasfilm Ltd. company, Marin County, CA
Leslie Ann Jones, engineer
Dann Thompson, assistant engineer
Jeanne Velonis, editing assistant

Cry of a Lady
Recorded March 1990 in Los Angeles, CA
Originally released on A Thousand Thoughts (Nonesuch 536952)

G Song
Recorded July 1997 at Skywalker Sound
Craig Silvey, engineer
Bob Levy, assistant engineer
Tom Luekens, editing assistant
Originally released on 25 Years (Nonesuch 79504)

Lacrymosa – Remembering Kevin
Recorded August 2002 at Skywalker Sound
Leslie Ann Jones, engineer
Dann Thompson, assistant engineer
Jeanne Velonis, editing assistant

Cadenza on the Night Plain
Recorded July–August 1997 at Skywalker Sound
Craig Silvey, engineer
Bob Levy, assistant engineer
Jeanne Velonis, editing assistant
Originally released on 25 Years (Nonesuch 79504)

Design by Evan Gaffney Design

For the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association: Janet Cowperthwaite, Managing Director; Laird Rodet, Associate Director; Sidney Chen, Artistic Administrator; with Mason Dille, Scott Fraser, Christina Johnson, Nikolás McConnie-Saad, Kären Nagy, Hannah Neff, and Lucinda Toy.

Project Supervisor for Kronos: Sidney Chen

Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz

Nonesuch Selection Number

549523

ns_album_releasedate
Album Status
Artist Name
Terry Riley
Kronos Quartet
MusicianDetails

MUSICIANS
Kronos Quartet

David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Sunny Yang, cello (1–2)

Joan Jeanrenaud, cello (3–16)
Jennifer Culp, cello (5)

with Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares; Dora Hristova, conductor (3)

Cover Art
UPC/Price
Label
CD+MP3
UPC
075597950182
Label
MP3
Price
11.00
UPC
075597950243
Label
FLAC
Price
12.00
UPC
075597950199
  • 549523

News & Reviews

  • Following Kronos Quartet’s historic 50th-anniversary season, longtime members John Sherba (violin) and Hank Dutt (viola) will retire from the ensemble at the end of June. Dutt joined Kronos in 1977; he and founder David Harrington (violin) recruited Sherba to join the group in 1978. Between now and the end of June, Sherba and Dutt will perform more than 20 shows with Harrington and cellist Paul Wiancko, who joined the quartet in 2023, culminating at the ninth annual Kronos Festival at the SFJAZZ Center. Kronos will enter its sixth decade with two new members: violinist Gabriela Díaz and violist Ayane Kozasa will join Harrington and Wiancko.

  • As part of Kronos: Five Decades, the year-long celebration of Kronos Quartet’s 50th anniversary, the group is publishing five decade-spanning playlists curated by its founder and violinist David Harrington. The fifth and final playlist, featuring music Kronos performed in its fifth decade, 2013–2022, is out now. It includes music from their album A Thousand Thoughts; Folk Songs, with vocals by Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Natalie Merchant, and Rhiannon Giddens; their Grammy-winning collaboration with Laurie Anderson, Landfall; and Terry Riley's Sun Rings. You can hear it here.

  • About This Album

    In honor of groundbreaking American composer Terry Riley’s 80th birthday, Nonesuch Records releases One Earth, One People, One Love: Kronos Plays Terry Riley—a five-disc box set of four albums of his work composed for, and performed by, his longtime friends and champions Kronos Quartet—as well as a new disc called Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley, on June 23, 2015, in North America and July 10 for the rest of the world. Riley and Kronos met more than 35 years ago, and since then, the quartet has commissioned 27 works from him, more than from any other composer in the group’s history.

    Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector includes a new recording of the title piece, which was Riley’s first for Kronos, as well as previously unreleased recordings of Lacrymosa – Remembering Kevin and One Earth, One People, One Love from Sun Rings; Cry of a Lady (originally released on A Thousand Thoughts); and G Song and Cadenza on the Night Plain (both originally released on 25 Years). Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector also is available for individual purchase. 

    Kronos Quartet continues its celebration of its friend with the KRONOS PRESENTS: Terry Riley Festival, June 26–28 at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco. The festival, the first project in the new KRONOS PRESENTS series, features some of Riley’s most significant and rarely-performed works, plus several world premieres composed in his honor, with special guest performers including Zakir Hussain, Wu Man, Riley’s son Gyan, and Riley himself.

    Kronos’ violinist, founder, and artistic director David Harrington says of the Quartet’s remarkably fruitful relationship with Terry Riley, which began in the late 1970s at Mills College in Oakland, California: “There is no other composer who has added so many new musical words to our vocabulary, words from so many corners of the musical world. Terry introduced Kronos to Pandit Pran Nath, Zakir Hussain, Bruce Connor, La Monte Young, Anna Halprin, Hamza El Din, Jon Hassell, and Gil Evans.” He continues, “In a crazed world laced with violence and destruction he has consistently been a force for peace. Through his gentle leadership a path forward has emerged. Terry sets the standard for what it means to be a musician in our time.”

    Riley says of his 35 years of working with Kronos: “Each of our projects together was launched by conversations with both David and me riffing on ideas. I always came away from these planning sessions feeling exhilarated, and these energies would soon get my pen moving toward a melody or a rhythmic pattern—or, in the case of Salome Dances for Peace, a five-quartet cycle. David has this gift, a unique catalytic effect on so many collaborators. Because of this gift, we have this astounding body of work created for Kronos over the past four decades.”

    Composer and performer Terry Riley is one of the founders of music’s Minimalist movement. His early works, notably In C (1964), pioneered a form in Western music based on structured interlocking repetitive patterns. The influence of Riley’s hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric, brightly orchestrated Eastern-flavored improvisations and compositions is heard across the span of contemporary and popular music. Performers who have commissioned and/or played his works include: Kronos Quartet, Rova Saxophone Quartet, ARTE Quartet, Array Music, Zeitgeist, Steven Scott Bowed Piano Ensemble, John Zorn, Sarah Cahill, California E.A.R. Unit, guitarist David Tanenbaum, electric violinist Tracy Silverman, drummer George Marsh, bassist Bill Douglass, the Assad brothers, cello octet Conjunto Ibérico, Crash Ensemble, Abel Steinberg-Winant Trio, pianists Werner Bartschi and Gloria Cheng, Calder Quartet, Arditti Quartet, Amati Quartet, Alter Ego, Sounds Bazaar, Paul Dresher, singer Amelia Cuni, Bang-on-a-Can All Stars, and guitarist Gyan Riley.

    For more than 40 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagining the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than 50 recordings, collaborating with many of the world’s most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning over 850 works and arrangements for string quartet. A Grammy winner, Kronos is also the only recipient of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize. With a staff of 11, the non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) manages all aspects of Kronos’ work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours and home-season performances, and education programs. In 2015/16, a new 5-year commissioning and education initiative, Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, will commission 50 new works (from 25 women and 25 men) designed to train students and emerging professionals, and be distributed online for free.

    Credits

    MUSICIANS
    Kronos Quartet

    David Harrington, violin
    John Sherba, violin
    Hank Dutt, viola
    Sunny Yang, cello (1–2)

    Joan Jeanrenaud, cello (3–16)
    Jennifer Culp, cello (5)

    with Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares; Dora Hristova, conductor (3)

    PRODUCTION CREDITS
    Produced by Judith Sherman

    Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector
    One Earth, One People, One Love
    Recorded December 2014 at Skywalker Sound, a Lucasfilm Ltd. company, Marin County, CA
    Leslie Ann Jones, engineer
    Dann Thompson, assistant engineer
    Jeanne Velonis, editing assistant

    Cry of a Lady
    Recorded March 1990 in Los Angeles, CA
    Originally released on A Thousand Thoughts (Nonesuch 536952)

    G Song
    Recorded July 1997 at Skywalker Sound
    Craig Silvey, engineer
    Bob Levy, assistant engineer
    Tom Luekens, editing assistant
    Originally released on 25 Years (Nonesuch 79504)

    Lacrymosa – Remembering Kevin
    Recorded August 2002 at Skywalker Sound
    Leslie Ann Jones, engineer
    Dann Thompson, assistant engineer
    Jeanne Velonis, editing assistant

    Cadenza on the Night Plain
    Recorded July–August 1997 at Skywalker Sound
    Craig Silvey, engineer
    Bob Levy, assistant engineer
    Jeanne Velonis, editing assistant
    Originally released on 25 Years (Nonesuch 79504)

    Design by Evan Gaffney Design

    For the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association: Janet Cowperthwaite, Managing Director; Laird Rodet, Associate Director; Sidney Chen, Artistic Administrator; with Mason Dille, Scott Fraser, Christina Johnson, Nikolás McConnie-Saad, Kären Nagy, Hannah Neff, and Lucinda Toy.

    Project Supervisor for Kronos: Sidney Chen

    Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz

More From Kronos Quartet