Dip your toe into the world minimalism and the north sea at the same time with our open air performance of terry riley’s In C, in the sea. On saturday 21st september 2018 with youth music ensemble clip, we  waded into the choppy waters at yarmonics festival.

Composed by Terry Riley in 1964, In C is for an indefinite number of performers. Written as a series of short melodic fragments, he suggests “a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work”. Every musician starts of phrase 1 and ends on phrase 53, taking as long or short as they wish on each section before moving on.

The choppy waters of the North Sea / Great Yarmouth Beach offered a variety of challenges, from sourcing acoustic (or battery powered) instrumentation to laminating the scores and of course considering how to keep dry throughout.

The beauty of In C is that even if you can’t read music, theres still provision within the programme notes for percussionists / rhythm-section to be the driving pulse through the performance. Keeping everybody in time as their phrases overlap creating polyrhythmic patterns.