Hi, I'm a professional software engineer with about 20 years of experience, in finance, ad tech, and ed tech. So not much along the lines of future or coding kind of orientation. I'm also a hobbyist audio programmer of limited ability but great enthusiasm. I'm obsessed with the Terry Riley composition "In C," and have written / re-written frameworks to perform it in ruby, Python, Chuck, and now headed in that direction again, this time in rust. This is the rust project.

I can't recommend it enough. The original recording is on Spotify and a very good performance. But it has also been recording perhaps 100s (definitely 10s) of times in many different contexts. As to the piece itself, I consider it the most brilliant piece of "serious composed" (what passes for "Classical") music ever. I am certainly not educated on the entire cannon to have that opinion, but anyway. My reason is that it "contains more music" than anything else and it is an atomically elegant and simple idea and (crucially) it is accessible and beautiful when performed. By "more music" I mean that it balances rhythm, melody, composition, improvisation, and performer interpretation (in the more traditional classical sense) perfectly, and it investigates harmony deeply and in real time by having each performance itself create layers of overtones of varying consonance which are ever-changing as part of the performance. I also think it's by far the most accomplished "aleatoric" classical composition (that I know of), meaning the process of performance is essential to the composition and described in the score.

Yeah, In C is a fantastic piece. Do you have a favourite rendition? I don't, hah, but the Africa Express version is a recent highlight.

I like the original release on Elektra and the version by Acid Mothers Temple.