Terry Riley's groundbreaking Minimalist masterwork In C turns a remarkable 45 years young this year. To celebrate, Kronos Quartet has gathered about 60 performers, many of whom participated in the piece's 1964 premiere at the San Francisco Tape Center, to join them and the composer to perform the work in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium for the first time.

Among the original In C performers reprising their roles are Stuart Dempster, Jon Gibson, Katrina Krimsky, and Morton Subotnick. Also on stage will be Dennis Russell Davies, Dave Douglas, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, Joan La Barbara, Gyan Riley, So Percussion, Wu Man, Dan Zanes, Evan Ziporyn of Bang on a Can, and many others, including Kronos's own artistic administrator, Sidney Chen, a former Nonesuch production coordinator and currently a member of the vocal ensemble M6, which performs the music of Meredith Monk.

Kronos has conducted a series of interviews with many of tonight's performers, which it has has published on its Facebook page, asking each to share his or her experience of first hearing the peice and the influence it has had over the years. You can read the interviews at facebook.com.

New York magazine's Justin Davidson in a preview of the event that examines the work's influence on composers like John Adams and Steve Reich, says, "Carnegie Hall’s extravaganza should yield a rich, polychrome stew of sound that will simmer for a couple of hours." Read the article at nymag.com.

Playbill calls the piece "the minimalist musical be-in that altered the course of music history." Terry Riley and Kronos Quartet founder David Harrington spoke with the magazine's Jason Victor Serinus about the work's origins and Riley's writing process for it, which Serinus succinctly sums up as "Mozart stoned." To which the composer replies, "Consistently and always. Eternally."

In the interview, Harrington shares his hopes for tonight's event. "One of the things I’m looking to accomplish is binding this multi-generational community of musicians together to have a joyous time, because there’s something about this music that’s so joyous," he tells Playbill. "For me, In C is a ritual. It’s a piece that invites the performers to listen in a new way and contribute when it feels like the right moment. As I’ve noticed with other pieces by Terry, it creates a community around it. That’s one of the beautiful things about it."

There's much more at playbillarts.com.

Riley and Harrington further discuss how the piece influenced their lives, their perceptions, and the course of music history, in an audio interview on carnegiehall.org, where you can also listen to an excerpt from the piece and learn more about tonight's event.