Articles
Spotlight 17
Anneli Drecker

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Aegri Somnia
Susan Alcorn
Damián Anache
A Sides and Makoto
Heather Woods Broderick
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Robert Crouch
Anneli Drecker
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Skydive Trio
Time Being
toy.bizarre / EMERGE
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ZOFO

EPs / Cassettes / DVDs / Mini-Albums / Singles
Alex Agore
Bird People / Waterflower
Kaison
Lullatone
Donna McKevitt
M. Mucci
Nattavaara Rocks
Zenwan

ZOFO: ZOFO Plays Terry Riley
Sono Luminus

To his credit, Terry Riley hasn't spent his career spinning countless variations on his most famous work, In C, though he very well could have, given how seminal the 1964 composition has become. There's a whole lot more to Riley than hypnotic pulsation and interlocking repetitive patterns, however, as is amply demonstrated by this splendid collection of piano performances by Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi under the name ZOFO (shorthand for twenty [20]-finger orchestra [FO]). The recording includes everything from a waltz and etude to a rag and tango, and ZOFO Plays Terry Riley ends up making as much of an argument for the group's pianistic artistry as the composer's music. Photos within the release's booklet show Riley intently listening to Zimmermann and Nakagoshi as they're playing, and the images say much about the eighty-year-old composer's involvement as he worked collaboratively with ZOFO on the project from its inception.

The sixty-eight-minute collection certainly presents a rich portrait of Riley. The album includes material originally conceived for piano-four-hands (“Cinco de Mayo,” “Jaztine,” “Waltz for Charismas,” “Tango Doble Ladiado,” and “Etude From the Old Country” are from The Heaven Ladder, Book 5), piano arrangements of two pieces composed for the Kronos Quartet (“G Song,” which appears on the 1985 album Cadenza on the Night Plain, and, from 1989's Salome Dances for Peace, “Half-Wolf Dances Mad in Moonlight”), and even a short piece commissioned by ZOFO itself (“Praying Mantis Rag”).

Though, as mentioned, the album material doesn't adhere strictly to the style associated with In C, signature traces of Riley's composing persona do naturally surface. A powerful rhythmic drive animates “Etude from the Old Country,” for example, in a way that suggests the presence of pulsation but does so subtly, with the emphasis primarily on melodic themes and dynamic contrasts than repetitive patterning. The macabre character and relentless momentum that distinguishes Kronos's rendering of “Half-Wolf Dances Mad in Moonlight” is present in ZOFO's, too. Considerably different in tone and tempo are “Simone's Lullaby,” which sets aside any connection to pulse-based minimalism for six tender minutes of piano-generated dreamscaping, and “G Song,” which, while propulsive, shimmers in similarly dream-like manner. And so far removed is the rollicking, high-spirited “Praying Mantis Rag” from the world of In C, it would be hard to imagine anyone deprived of such information identifying it as a Riley creation.

July-August 2015