Terry Riley, Amelia Cuni ‎– The Lion's Throne (2019)

1 	Lion's Throne	10:55
2 	Arica	21:37
3 	Crazy World	16:26
4 	Cancione	16:26
5 	Tarana In Hindol	9:50

- Terry Riley - vocals, piano, keyboards, composer (1-3,5)
- Amelia Cuni - vocals, composer (4)
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- Francis Silkstone - Baroque violin (5)
- Tatty Theo - Baroque cello (5)
- Bhavani Shankar - Mridangam (5)

The Lion’s Throne bears witness to the performances that the legendary composer Terry Riley and Italian singer Amelia Cuni did together in the United Kingdom and Italy between 1999 and 2006. Riley, whose remarkable body of work seamlessly integrates a lifetime of devotion to Indian classical music into the western classical tradition, collaborates with Cuni, a singer trained in Dhrupad who, like Riley, experiments with Indian singing in a variety of ways.

In these recordings, Riley plays piano or keyboards and sings with Cuni. Together, they improvise in Hindi, English, and Italian, drawing from their Indian music background as well as from western traditions. They sing on ancient and modern texts, creating a new blend which mirrors their own musical paths.

“I first met Amelia Cuni in Berlin in January, 1997... Amelia came to the concert, bringing a beautiful carpet for me to sit upon to sing the raga section of our program. We soon began talking about collaboration as we shared a background in and devotion to Indian Classical music practice. Amelia had undergone years of training in the Drupad tradition and I had studied the Khayal tradition. Both of us had composed raga-based works and had merged this ancient tradition with our own particular creative work outside the Indian forms.

“We began our collaboration with a commission from Sounds Bazaar, led by UK composer/performer, Francis Silkstone. I wrote a suite of pieces. ‘Tarana In Hindol’, heard on this recording, was the concluding work. Silkstone plays the Baroque violin, Tatty Theo the Baroque cello and Bhavani Shakar the mridangam (South Indian drum). Later on, when I was in Gmünden, Switzerland, Amelia joined me for our first duo rehearsals where we began to work out material together that we performed in a subsequent series of concerts in Montefalco, Udine, and Padua in 2005 and 2006.

“I greatly admire Amelia’s artistry. She is one of the most expressive, powerful and deeply emotional voices in contemporary music.” ---Terry Riley, soundohm.com

This published material between Terry Riley And Amelia Cuni - The Lion's Throne (2019), was taken from live recordings (no recorded applauses) in the United Kingdom and Italy in between 1999 / 2006 and showcases both Riley's and Amelia Cuni's connection with Classical Indian music and its juxtaposition with modern Western canons and tunings.

The Lion's Throne is a 5 track album, its first three tracks ( Lion's Throne, Arica & Crazy World) are piano/vocals based compositions. Their surprise and thrill beyond their enticing transmuting piano structures relies on the female/male counterpointing vocal patterns and their respective lyrical experimentation on ancient and modern texts.

The last 2 tracks are played on different instruments therefore written for a different style of music and a different vocal approach, which to put it in PA's category list of terms, fit easily in the (contemporary) Indo-Prog/Raga (less the Rock plus its rare experimental side, plus again the lyrical reinterpretentions on ancient and modern texts.), sub-genre.

As I listen to it my personal appreciation falls between my ever growing affection for voiceless/textless music (or of only certain vocal registers or texts) and my utter admiration for Mr. Riley's ever growing and challenging, as always original, musical language.

This recorded recollection of live encounters if anything wraps up pretty much Terry Riley's songwriting scopes and his relentless quest as contemporary composer and underlines Amelia Cuni's evident singing talent and on track four: Cantico her composer's one.

So, as I mentioned, not exactly my cup of tea, but it will be absurd to underrate it due to the same. ---admireArt, progarchives.com

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