In this live broadcast from Overlook Mountain, “Overlooked” host Rob Saffer will all-too-briefly survey the prolific and wide-ranging career of composer and multi-instrumentalist Terry Riley, who turned 90 on June 24. Composing and recording scores of albums since the mid-1960s, Riley’s had a vast influence on music and art. This show will feature long- and short-form works - most composed, some improvised - played by Riley himself as well as by other collaborators and performers such as the Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Don Cherry, Krishna Bhatt and others. We’ll hear at least one piece from each of the seven decades of Riley’s career, concluding with one released on his 90th birthday! 

Playlist: 

In C - Maya Beiser 

Vitus Labrusca (“Overlooked” theme) - Ben LaMar Gay

Poppy Nogood All Night Flight V. 1 (part 5) (1968)

A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969)

The Protege (Church of Anthrax with John Cale, 1971)

Improvisation (Koln Concert with Don Cherry) (1975)

Across the Lake of the Ancient World (Shri Camel, 1980)

Song from Old Country, Part 2 (with Krishna Bhatt, Great American Music Hall, 1983)

Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector (Cadenza on the Night Plain, Kronos Quartet, 1985)

Lazy Afternoon Among the Crocodiles ( Terry Riley, Stefano Scodanibbio, 1997)

Jaipur Local (No Man's Land / Conversation With The Sirocco, 1999)

Derveshum Carnivalis (Atlantis Nath, 2003)

Cry of a Lady (Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: The Music of Terry Riley, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares & Kronos Quartet, 2015)

See Them Out There (Autodreamographical Tales, Bang on a Can All-Stars, 2022)

The Holy Liftoff (Claire Chase & Mivos Quartet, 2024)

Komol Reshab Asavari (with Sara Miyamoto, 2025)

“Overlooked” is a show focusing on overlooked and underplayed music of all varieties: jazz, improvisational, international, and other fringe music, ancient to future, familiar to rare, classic to weird. Broadcast live from Overlook Mountain in Ulster County, “Overlooked” offers programs focused solely on newly released music along with others that focus on specific musical themes or history.

Host Rob Saffer is the former Executive Director and Producer of the Creative Music Foundation and Creative Music Studio. While living in Brooklyn for 25 years, he served on advisory boards for Celebrate Brooklyn! and Symphony Space. He also curated the Brooklyn Museum’s summer jazz series and helped found The Mingus Big Band with Mingus’s widow, Sue.