Music Is a Continuum | Composer Terry Riley | Louisiana Channel

“Music is the evolvement of the human spirit with sounds“. Meet the pioneering composer Terry Riley whose minimalistic and hypnotic works have inspired musicians and composers for decades. We visited him in his new home in Japan. Terry Riley was born in California in 1935, and his first memory of music was at the age of three, a song called “South of The Border (Down Mexico Way)“. “It was such an emotional shock to my system,“ he recalls. “It stayed with me throughout my life: This is what music can do and how deeply it can affect you, maybe as deep as any experience you can have in life.“ Terry Riley has walked a unique way in composing. “I have a hard time with musical categories. I am called a minimalist, and what the hell does that mean? That I only brush my teeth once a week? I think there are only two kinds of music, good and bad,“ Riley says. “When I compose, I don’t plan things like an architect drawing everything out and