Sarah Cahill: Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley

Listeners can access Terry Riley’s world through dozens of portals—In C and A Rainbow in Curved Air, his compositions for Kronos Quartet and Rova Saxophone Quartet, and more. Now add Eighty Trips Around the Sun. Curated by pianist and radio programmer Sarah Cahill, the four-CD set pays homage to—and exemplifies the breadth of—Riley’s piano music. Disc one’s seven pieces, with Cahill playing five and Regina Myers two, span more than 50 years of Riley’s compositions, from minimalist studies to the melodically rhapsodic “Be Kind to One Another.” Disc two finds Cahill and Myers performing together on five diverse four-hand works. On disc three, Cahill plays tribute pieces by Danny Clay, Gyan Riley, Elena Ruhr, Dylan Mattingly, and others, and disc four is given over to an extended performance of Pauline Oliveros’ A Trilling Piece for Terry, with Cahill (prepared piano) joined by Samuel Adams (piano and live electronics). In her notes, Cahill situates Riley in a lineage extending from Liszt and Chopin to Art Tatum, Monk, Cecil Taylor, and Carla Bley. Eighty Trips provides a deep dive into that more-than-minimalist aesthetic, a boundless source of fascination and delight.