Terry Riley: Sun Rings

Kronos Quartet’s ground-breaking 2002 collaboration with composer Terry Riley, Sun Rings, is available as a recording for the first time. One movement from the piece – ‘One Earth, One People, One Love’ – was previously included in Kronos’ 2015 Terry Riley box set of the same name.

Sun Rings began with a call from NASA to Kronos Quartet’s manager. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Voyager 1 space probe’s launch was coming, and the agency wondered if Kronos would be able to use the “space sounds” that Voyager 1 and 2, as well as other spacecraft, had sent back to Earth in its performances.

A meeting was quickly arranged between Kronos’ artistic director, founder, and violinist David Harrington and University of Iowa physics professor Don Gurnett, who had developed the plasma wave instruments that had received these sounds. After listening to Gurnett’s collection of favourite “space sounds,” Harrington says, “I instantly knew Terry should be the composer to bring them into our work.” At that point, Riley and Kronos had been working together for more than twenty years, beginning with the composer’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector. Harrington continues, “Eventually this led to all sorts of sonic adventures in Don’s office.”