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Terry Riley - "Barbary Coast 1955", for 5​-​string violin

from This Is America - An Anthology 2020​-​2021 (ICR023) by Johnny Gandelsman

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about

1. I felt extremely honored and excited when Johnny Gandelsman asked me to write him something for solo violin...I chose his 5 string one which gives it the range of the viola.

2. Having nothing particular in mind I began.

3. First I wrote a piece based on a poem of Gary Snyder outlining what every good poem should consist of. Rejected that.

4. Next I wrote a piece on a beautiful rhyming poem by Michael McClure. Rejected that.

5. Then I figured out I was trying to write about my impressions of San Francisco of the 1950's...thus the title Barbary Coast which was then a bunch of seedy bars and strip joints located on the southern downhill slopes of North Beach.

6. Then I came up with an attractive South American themed melody that might have found itself drifting into the weed scented room of a Beat poet from a house down the street.

7. Then I wrote a mystical counter theme with double stops that gave Johnny cramps in his arms and hands after a few minutes.

8. I then revised that section with the double stops to make it more playable but when Johnny played the revision for me I did not like it.

9. I then revised the section with the double stops into a mystical stripped down version all played in harmonics.

10. I decided the South American themed opening was too short and made it 4 times longer.

11. I rewrote the ending 3 times.

Terry Riley

"Barbary Coast 1955" was generously commissioned by Arts & Letters, University of California Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA)

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from This Is America - An Anthology 2020​-​2021 (ICR023), released July 1, 2022
Johnny Gandelsman, 5-string violin

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