Keep St. Louis Strange And Wonderful

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A bit more from the performance of Terry Riley's In C Tuesday evening in the Old Post Office Plaza. Keeping St. Louis strange and wonderful is an essential but difficult task.

The video at the end was taken with my iPhone. The sound quality leaves a lot to be desired, mashing everything together so that you can't hear the subtle individual parts. It's here just to give a general sense of the performance. If you like this stuff, you may enjoy another favorite Riley piece, A Rainbow In Curved Air.

If the video does not start, double-click it to go the original on Flickr.

In C

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If you have looked at my Blogger profile you may have noticed that one of my interests is "music that most people I know think is weird." We had a big, wonderful serving of it downtown last night in the Old Post Office Plaza..

Terry Riley's In C is the seminal work of minimalism. According to the program notes:

What makes In C especially unique is that the entire score features just one scale - C major - broken out into 53 separate musical sections of varying patterns, with no set duration, and can be played for any number of musicians on any given instrumentation. Individual performers are given loose guidelines on moving from section to section, but much is left to their "in the moment" interpretation, making each performance wholly unique.

You can hear some of the original recording here.

Last night's performance was by the HEARding Cats Collective, led by Richard O'Donnell, the retired principal percussionist of the St. Louis Symphony. There were not only musicians but also interpretive dancers, professional and spontaneous.

More of this on Friday after I edit some video. The Thursday Arch Series returns tomorrow.