Terry Riley came to music through jazz standards and traditional American music, as well as classical repertoire, which he discovered from the age of six through violin and piano lessons. After the war, he came into contact with modern music. From 1953 to 1955, he studied piano with Duane Hampton and theory with Ralph Wadsworth at Shasta College in California. From 1955 to 1957, he studied composition with Wendell Otey at San Francisco State University and piano with Adolf Baller at the San Francisco Conservatory. In 1958, he studied composition with Robert Erickson, who introduced him to the works of Schoenberg, and ragtime with Wally Rose. Around this time, he formed an improvisation trio with Pauline Oliveros and Lauren Rush. In 1959, he enrolled at the University of California, studying composition with Seymour Shifrin and later with William Denny. It was during this period that he developed a close friendship with La Monte Young, with whom he would subsequently frequently collaborate. Through the influence of Young, Riley became interested in the music of John Coltrane, but also that of Stockhausen; the influence of the latter is manifest in the sextet, Spectra (1959). In 1959-1960, Riley and Young were composers-in-residence with the Anna Halprin Dance Company. At this time, their work was heavily influenced by the ideas of John Cage. Around 1960, Riley began experimenting with tape splicing/looping, soon giving rise to fixed media works such as Mescalin Mix (1961).

Upon graduating with a Master of Arts in 1961, Riley traveled to France. Over the following two years, he took several trips, spending time in Spain, Morocco, and Leningrad (where he performed with the Leningrad Jazz Quartet), attending the Darmstadt Summer Courses (1963), and participating in happenings in Denmark and street theatre in Helsinki. In Paris, he regularly attended Fluxus events. he collaborated with playwright Ken Dewey on The Gift, and with trumpetist Chet Baker on the tape part for Music for the Gift (1963). He continued to experiment with tape looping at the Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française Studios. Riley earned a living during this period as a pianist, performing in Pigalle and in night clubs on US Air Force bases. Following their closure (after the death of President John F. Kennedy), Riley was obliged to return to the United States.

In November 1964, Terry Riley’s In C, his most well-known repetitive minimalist work, was premiered at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. In 1965, he moved to New York, where he would spend the following four years. He participated in La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music as a singer for eight months. Around 1967, Riley presented his first “all-night concert” as a soloist, which would contribute to his notoriety. His works from this period, such as A Rainbow in the Curved Air (1968), call more frequently for improvisation, and they abandon, for the most part, standard musical notation.

In 1970, Riley studied Hindustani music with Pandit Pran Nath in New Delhi. He would regularly return to India, first to continue his studies, but later to teach and perform with Pran Nath until the death of the latter in 1996. In 1972, inspired by Sufi ceremonies, Riley composed Persian Surgery Dervishes. From 1971 to 1981, he taught Indian music and composition at Mills College in Oakland. While there, he met David Harrington, one of the founders of the Kronos Quartet, for whom Riley would go on to compose numerous works, including Salome dances for Peace (1985-1987), The Sands (1991; commissioned by the Salzburg Festival), and Sun Rings (2002; commissioned by NASA).

In 1989, Riley founded the improvisation group Khayal, and in 1993, the theatre company The Travelling Avant-Garde, which would go on to perform his multimedia chamber opera The Saint Adolf Ring (1992). In 1991, he composed his first orchestra work, Jade Palace, for the centenary of Carnegie Hall. In 1992, he was composer-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and in 1996, at Arcosanti, Arizona. Starting in 1993, he taught at the Chisti Sabri School of Music in Marin, California, and in Jaipur in India, and in 1995 at the California Institute of Arts, and the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado; the latter institution has a Buddhist-inspired approach to teaching, referred to as “meditative education,” with an emphasis on multiculturalism. In the late 1990s, Riley performed widely as a solo pianist, but also collaborated with artists including saxophonist George Brooks, sitar and tabla player Krishna Bhatt, and contrabassist Stefano Scodanibbio. Residing in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Riley spends his time playing ragas, improvising, and composing. He continues to tour the United States, Europe, and India.