Philip Gorsk

Philip on Film: Filmworks by Philip Glass Review by Richard S. Ginell
In conjunction with a fall 2001 touring film festival, in which the Philip Glass Ensemble played the composer's scores live in sync with the films, Nonesuch released this handy, compact five-disc retrospective of Glass' prolific output for the cinema. Perhaps subliminally aware that Glass' large film catalog is wildly uneven in quality, producers and longtime associates Kurt Munkacsi and Michael Riesman have chosen wisely and well, generally giving the best scores complete or nearly complete attention on the first four discs and saving the fifth disc for excerpts from others, as well as a few unreleased new works for the faithful. Of all of Glass' cinematic collaborators, director Godfrey Reggio seems to have brought out the best in this composer.

From the Philip Glass Archive is a series of releases from Orange Mountain Music which seeks to document archival and unreleased material or reissue classic albums by Philip Glass. The current volume, the sixth, features a collaboration between Glass and African musician Foday Musa Suso from a score they both worked on in the 1990s. The work was incidental music to the play The Screens by Jean Genet and was directed by JoAnne Akalaitis. Glass described the collaboration as the closest thing he had come to at that point of a true collaboration with both artists contributing original pieces and both working on many in the score together. The Screens was originally released on Point Music in the late 1990s. Orange Mountain Music is also pleased to present this remastered version with the inclusion of two bonus tracks of Philip Glass and Foday Musa Suso LIVE, recorded in New York in 2009.

In some circles Philip Glass is known as "The Godfather of Trance" and that popularity has led many young producer/musicians from around the world to create remixes of his music. Glass's own label Orange Mountain Music has put together its most unusual CD to date with this collection of 13 exciting remix tracks, some unsolicited, covering a wide selection of his pieces - from vocal, instrumental and orchestral music to film scores. These absorbing new interpretations of Philip's work represent a very diverse programme without any one dominant style - dance, techno, trance, ambient and downtempo influences are all there.

Philip Glass' one act chamber opera In the Penal Colony was composed in 2000. The libretto is by Rudolph Wurlitzer and based on a story by Franz Kafka.

In 1986 Mr. Glass was commissioned to create and bring a piece to the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Adelaide, Australia. He chose to write a piece based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story "A Descent into the Maelström" and invited collaborators dancer/choreographer Molissa Fenley, set designer Eamon D’Arcy and theatre director Mathew McGuire to participate. They transformed Edgar Allan Poe's vertiginous short story of being swept into a huge and terrible whirlpool by a raging hurricane that "the oldest seaman in Norway never experienced" into a Musical/Dance/Theatre extravganza. This compelling, propulsive piece of music premiered in March, 1986 at the Adelaide Festival of Arts and was only performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble during the week of the festival in Australia. Consequently, it has had very little exposure to Philip Glass' audience. This little known recording of this powerful piece of classic Glass music was made when the Philip Glass Ensemble was at one of its peaks. It was also done in possibly one of the best settings for Philip Glass and his musicians– musical theatre.

Orange Mountain Music presents the original motion picture soundtrack to Visitors, the new film by acclaimed director Godfrey Reggio with an original score by Philip Glass performed by the Bruckner Orchester Linz conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. Glass and Reggio have a collaborative relationship dating back over thirty years including past collaborations on Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi. Visitors is Reggio's first film in over a decade and inspired an elegant evocative score from Glass. This recording was produced by long-time Glass collaborator Kurt Munkacsi. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 2013.

The organ music of Philip Glass presents some of his most significant and extended minimalist works. Dance 2 and Dance 4 are the two solo organ movements of a five-part work composed in the early 1970s. The arrangement of the Act III Finale to his opera Satyagraha dates from 1980 and is one of the most famous and familiar pieces in all Glass. The sheer accuracy and concentration of Kevin Bowyer's performances guarantee that this music is heard to its best effect on the splendid 1995 Marcussen organ at Tonbridge School.

The Photographer is a three-part mixed media performance accompanied by music (also sometimes referred to as a chamber opera) by composer Philip Glass. The libretto is based on the life and homicide trial of 19th-century American photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Commissioned by the Holland Festival, the opera was first performed in 1982 at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.

The Fourth Volume documenting the concertos by Philip Glass, this volume presents a brand new recording of the composers 2010 commission from the Nederlands Dans Theater, a Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra featuring soloists Tim Fain and Wendy Sutter under the direction of Maestro Jurjen Hempel. The second concerto is the first piano concerto by Glass, the Tirol Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra performed by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchester with Dennis Russell Davies conducting from the keyboard.