Turning 90 in 2025, composer Terry Riley is a true living legend of music. On January 16, London’s Kings Place launches a celebration of Riley’s birthday with a live performance of his masterful Sun Rings. Sun Rings is an evening-length work scored for string quartet, chorus, and live electronics, and is performed at Kings Place by the UK’s longest-established Sacconi Quartet, the ever-collaborative Festival Voices, and conductor Greg Batsleer.
The concert features a new performance edition of Sun Rings prepared in consultation with David Dvorin, a longtime creative associate of Riley’s who helped realize the electronics when Sun Rings first premiered with the Kronos Quartet in the early 2000s.
A ten-part suite, utilizing audio recordings from NASA’s Voyager missions, Sun Rings is an evocative journey from Earth to the cosmos. With his inspiration from a 2001 trip to Cape Kennedy interrupted by 9/11, Riley wanted his work ‘to have one message about how we human beings have to grow before we take our culture out into space.’ Through this prism, Sun Rings transcends mere musical exploration questioning humanity’s place in the universe as we venture beyond our world - it offers a profound message about growth and unity.
Kings Place continues their celebration of Riley’s 90th year on February 8, with the Ligeti Quartet performing his seminal work Cadenza on the Night Plain, and premiering a new arrangement of Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band by Richard Jones.
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