Glass Opening

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.

Orange Mountain Music presents the world premiere recording of Philip Glass' The Passion of Ramakrishna. Commissioned by the Pacific Symphony and premiered in 2006 during the opening of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, Glass' 45 minute oratorio, written for soloists, chorus and large orchestra, is a passion play and a tribute to 19th Century Indian spiritual leader Sri Ramakrishna. The work portrays his death with the chorus taking up the voice of Ramakrishna himself and the soloists are those of his loved ones, doctor and disciples. Maestro Carl St.Clair, a longtime champion of the music of Philip Glass, leads the Pacific Symphony, Pacific Chorale and soloists Christopheren Numura, Janice Chandler Eteme, Kevin Deas, I-Chin Feinblatt and Nicholas Preston.

Koyaanisqatsi is a contemporary masterpiece. The film has had a significant impact on the media arts, music and popular culture since its release in 1983. This version is the original soundtrack including the sound effects used in the film.

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.

The Concerto Project Vol. II is the second release in Orange Mountain Music’s Concerto Project series and features two world premiere recordings of works by composer Philip Glass. Pianist Paul Barnes performs Piano Concerto No. 2 “After Lewis and Clark” with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra conducted by Ralph Gothóni. The concerto was commissioned in part by the Nebraska Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission in celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the explorers’ journey across the American continent. The three movements are titled “The Vision”, “Sacagawea” and “The Land.” The first and third movements bookend an intimate middle movement that features a traditional Shoshone Indian theme performed on the Native American flute by R. Carlos Nakai. The dynamic flare of the first concerto is contrasted by the album’s second work, Philip Glass’s beautiful Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra. The three movement concerto is performed by harpsichordist Jillon Stoppels Dupree and the Northwest Chamber Orchestra conducted by Ralph Gothóni.

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.

Truth in Our Time complements American minimalist’s new symphony with compelling programming including Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9, Korngold’s Violin Concerto, featuring James Ehnes, and potent contemporary works by Nicole Lizée and Yao.  "The concert was as much a capsule presentation of the orchestra as an institution as well as a performing ensemble. The NACO has a crisp, slightly light sound, sonorous but expressive through articulation, color, and agility rather than mass, and this suited all the pieces," New York Classical Review of the US Premiere at Carnegie Hall, April 2022

Truth in Our Time complements American minimalist’s new symphony with compelling programming including Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9, Korngold’s Violin Concerto, featuring James Ehnes, and potent contemporary works by Nicole Lizée and Yao.  "The concert was as much a capsule presentation of the orchestra as an institution as well as a performing ensemble. The NACO has a crisp, slightly light sound, sonorous but expressive through articulation, color, and agility rather than mass, and this suited all the pieces," New York Classical Review of the US Premiere at Carnegie Hall, April 2022