George Brooks & Terry Riley

From Tokyo to Torino, London to Lisbon, Berlin to Brussels and Belfast and back, George Brooks & Terry Riley have developed nearly telepathic communication, weaving jazz, classical, stride, rags and ragas and Riley's ground breaking minimalism into an richly textured musical tapestry.

Californian Terry Riley, whose career has spanned 5 decades, is one of the most influential composers and performers in contemporary music. His revolutionary work, IN C, changed the course of music after 1964. It introduced… Show more a new approach to tonality and new structural principles that projected kaleidoscopic, psychedelic atmospheres, representing a striking departure from the then established musical direction of the mid 20th century. An imaginative, virtuosic improviser, his recordings such as A Rainbow in Curved Air and Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band, with their driving kinetic rhythms, sent waves across the contemporary music world influencing groups like The Who (Yes! he is Baba O’Riley) and The Soft Machine.

A Grammy-nominated composer, Riley has written extensively for orchestra, choir and string quartet and his work has been performed on virtually every continent. He has collaborated with some of the great names of our era, including Kronos Quartet, Chet Baker, La Monte Young, Zakir Hussain, Krishna Bhatt, Michael McClure, John Cale, Dennis Russell Davies, Leonard Slatkin.

George Brooks is a saxophonist and composer, acclaimed for successfully bridging the worlds of jazz and Indian classical music. He founded the seminal Indian fusion groups Summit with Zakir Hussain, Bombay Jazz with Ronu Majumdar and Larry Coryell, the Raga Bop Trio with Steve Smith and Prasanna and Elements with Gwyneth Wentink and Kala Ramnath.

In 1996 Brooks recorded Lasting Impression and Night Spinner for Zakir Hussain’s Moment Records. The success of these CDs led to performances and recordings with Indian super-stars Hariprasad Chaurasia, Sultan Khan, VM Bhatt, Vikku Vinayakram, Trilok Gurtu, Shujaat Khan, Shankar Mahadevan. George has also performed and recorded with genre-defining artists John McLaughlin, Etta James, Anthony Braxton, Talvin Singh, poet Michael McClure, and Ray Manzarek (of the Doors). He has received commissions and grants from the American Composers Forum, Arts International, MetLife Creative Connections and the SF MOMA. His solo harp composition ‘The Alchemy of Happineses” premiered at the 2012 Gaudeamus Muziekweek.

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