The concert staged by Terry Riley, Don Cherry and Karl Berger in Cologne, Germany on

February 23 1975 serves as a landmark of minimalist jazz. Keyboardist and composer Terry

Riley was the driving force behind the set. He was born in a small town located in the High

Sierra mountain range of northern California, studying composition at San Francisco State

University and the University of California, Berkeley, were he began experimenting with tape

recorders, and befriended avant-garde composer, La Monte Young, whom he briefly joined in

the experimental Fluxus group. Moving to Paris in the early 1960s, he continued his tape

experiments, using a pair of machines to form a “time lag accumulator” that perpetually

recycled what was played. He moved to New York in 1965 to collaborate with Young and

began playing all-night solo concerts, making a record with John Cale that would surface as

The Church of Anthrax. Then, after a lengthy period of study in New Delhi, he returned to

California to continue his varied musical experiments. Trumpeter Don Cherry was born in

Oklahoma and raised in Watts in Los Angeles, where he was mentored by Clifford Brown.

After a chance meeting in the late 1950s, he began playing with free-jazz saxophonist Ornette

Coleman, leading to subsequent work with experimental jazz giants such as John Coltrane,

Sonny Rollins and Albert Ayler, among many others. Heidelberg-born pianist, vibraphonist

and composer Karl Berger learned to play jazz from visiting American performers such as

trumpeter Don Ellis and saxophonist Leo Wright. He began playing in Don Cherry’s band in

the mid-1960s, which led to his first solo recordings; in 1972, he co-founded the Creative

Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, with Coleman. The Live in Köln album is comprised

of just three mega-length songs, with Riley in the driver’s seat, Berger as a steady

accompaniment and Cherry passing through in fleeting melodic moments; final track “Köln

Improvisations” references the Indian musical and spiritual forms that were so appealing to

each musician; opening track “Descending Moonshine Dervishes” bridges the psychedelic

and minimalist realms and “Sunrise Of The Planetary Dream Collective” is based on

throbbing, repetitive keyboard and vibraphone patterns.

SIDE A

Descending Moonshine Dervishes

SIDE B

Descending Moonshine Dervishes

SIDE C

Sunrise Of The Planetary Dream

Collector

SIDE D

Improvisation