I have been living in NYC for about seven months now, and Saturday night was my first time visiting the legendary music hall called Carnegie. Built in 1891, and funded by the namesake Andrew Carnegie, this music venue is known for its acoustics, architecture, and rich history. Carnegie Hall was one ofNew York’s last buildings to be built entirely of masonry, with no steel frames in its original structure.

Evil Doug, a friend and frequent contributor to the art & culture space called Revoluciones that I co-founded and directed back in Denver, contacted me recently via Facebook. Evil Doug informed me that he had a couple of extra tickets for the 45th anniversary performance of Terry Riley’s “In C” minimalist composition and was wondering if I would like to come along. So I scooped up my fellow Brooklynite Will, along with Doug and his friend Cory the photographer, and we all headed up to 57th Street to witness an important piece of contemporary music history.

As we took our balcony seats in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, I noticed that people were a lot smaller in 1891. Throughout the night, I would try to keep from kneeing the person sitting in front of me in the back of the head.

Terry Riley conceived of his masterpiece “In C” on a bus on the way to a gig in 1964. He had recently been influenced by Coltrane’s circular workouts, Ravi Shankar’s extended ragas, as well as La Monte Young’s pre-Fluxus and Dada concepts. Mr. Riley was “properly stoned” when the patterns began to unfold in his head, organizing themselves into 53 repetitive modules. The idea was to have these patterns performed by “any number of any kind of instruments”, amateurs and professional musicians alike. The phrases can be repeated any number of times, but they must be played in order. “In C” depends upon collective listening between musicians, each one phasing in and out of the fundamental patterns.

Saturday night, the stage was filled with about 65 people, including a wide range of brass, vocalists, strings, keyboards, percussion, a didgeridoo, and much more. Front and center on the stage were the contemporary classical string combo Kronos Quartet. Prominent minimalist composer Philip Glass was along the back row with several other keyboardists. Terry Riley himself was well-placed in the middle of the entire orchestra; a centerpiece elevated for the all of the audience to see.

The composition began with repeating eighth notes of C major on the keyboard, a pulse that is the resonant backbone of “In C”. Gradually, the musicians began to present themselves in the form of the 53 short modules, informing and being informed by each other, and forming multiple layers of sound. The playing of phrases would begin at different times by all of the instruments and voices. At times harmonic, discordant at others, the sounds morph through moods and textures while the initial drone of eighth notes remains a ground-wire for the flowing chaos. Like clouds moving and dispersing, building and fading, instruments and groups of instruments convey feelings of great joy then move on to something a bit more sinister. Several times during the performance I was literally entranced by the drone of this cannabis-influenced psychedelia. The didgeridoo had the obvious drone effects too; hypnotizing the audience while the moods shifted in and out of intense climaxes.

When the journey finally came to a close, I looked at my watch to notice that almost two hours had past since we sat down. Effective timelessness had confused my linear mind during the performance and transported me into the brilliant and chaotic waves of this anniversary performance of music history’s first minimalist composition. In hindsight, “In C” makes a lot of sense to me in terms of contemporary avant-garde music. Riley, Young, and the other composers of those days in the early sixties, had a huge influence on music that would begin to emerge in the next few decades. The Velvet Underground, Brian Eno, Spacemen 3, and even The Who would apply these musical ideas and deliver them to a broader listening audience.

I must admit, I had not yet heard Terry Riley before this concert, and I feel privileged to have experienced it. Riley and the other 64 musicians produced an inspiring and intoxicating brew of the repetitive, circular music that I so adore. Music informs much of my own art and design, and Riley’s chaos is going to help tremendously to carry my creative flow into the realms that I feel that my art is moving. Thanks Evil Doug for a wonderful evening.