Fri 8.5 Black and White Scherzo

PHILIP GLASS (b. 1937)

Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times. The operas – Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, Akhnaten, and The Voyage, among many others – play throughout the world’s leading houses, and rarely to an empty seat. Glass has written music for experimental theater and for Academy Award-winning motion pictures such as “The Hours” and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, while Koyaanisqatsi, his initial filmic landscape with Godfrey Reggio and the Philip Glass Ensemble, may be the most radical and influential mating of sound and vision since Fantasia. His associations, personal and professional, with leading rock, pop and world music artists date back to the 1960s, including the beginning of his collaborative relationship with artist Robert Wilson. Indeed, Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular music -- simultaneously. The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” There has been nothing “minimalist” about his output. In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than twenty operas, large and small; eight symphonies (with others already on the way); two piano concertos and concertos for violin, piano, timpani, cello and saxophone quartet and orchestra; soundtracks; string quartets; and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. Recent Festival performances include the west coast premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2 (2004) in 2005 and the world premiere of his score commissioned by the Festival for the multi-media work LIFE: A Journey Through Time in 2006, Symphony No. 8 in 2007, and his Cello Concerto with Wendy Sutter as soloist at the Mission at San Juan Bautista in 2010. A new work by Glass--to be given its world premiere on August 5--is dedicated to Marin Alsop on her 20th anniversary as music director at Cabrillo.