Uncle Jard

ARTE Quartett
Put together a saxophone quartet, harpsichord, and Indian vocal techniques. The sax quartet should drown out the harpsichord and the harpsichord’s slight delay ought to sound too exposed in music which is essentially monophonic, right? It shouldn’t work, but it does! The saxes sometimes sound like tamburas, at other times like a choir of sarangis; the harpsichord like a sarod on overdrive. Once again, Terry Riley finds a way to reconcile the seemingly unreconcilable, and in so doing creates music that is simultaneously totally natural and totally new.

—FJO