Orange Mountain Music and the Metropolitan Opera are proud to announce the release of Philip Glass’s opera SATYAGRAHA across a variety of media. SATYAGRAHA portrays Gandhi’s years in South Africa during the time he developed his tools for social transformation through nonviolence. Captured at the 2011 revival of the work, the production was directed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch and starred Richard Croft as Gandhi along with a stellar cast with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & Chorus under Dante Anzolini. Sung in Sanskrit from texts drawn from the Bhagavad Gita, the opera dramatically portrays the vocal text was by Constance DeJong with book by Philip Glass and Constance DeJong. The Met Opera’s co-production with the English National Opera was heard in New York in 2008 and 2011 and in London in 2007, 2013, and 2013.
One of the biggest hits of the 2019–20 season, Philip Glass's Akhnaten is the third installment in the composer's Portrait Trilogy focused on revolutionary figures from world history. Starring as the ancient Egyptian pharaoh who attempted to radically alter his society, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo headlines this performance from the Live in HD series. In her Met-debut season, Karen Kamensek conducts the hypnotic score, leading a cast that also features soprano Dísella Lárusdóttir as Queen Tye, mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges as Nefertiti, and bass Zachary James as Amenhotep I. Phelim McDermott's endlessly inventive production fills the Met stage with breathtaking visuals, including virtuosic pattern-juggling routines by Gandini Juggling.
An emblematic figure of her time, Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) taught and inspired several generations of musicians, from Igor Stravinsky to Quincy Jones. Her musical and pedagogical philosophy, demanding yet highly stimulating, influenced the entire twentieth century. Astrig Siranossian, a rising star of the cello who now joins Alpha for several recordings, is fascinated by this musical personality whom everyone respectfully called ‘Mademoiselle’. She met some of her most illustrious students, including the late Michel Legrand, and Daniel Barenboim who has agreed to accompany her in a piece on the album. With the pianist Nathanaël Gouin, she has devised a very eclectic programme, including the three pieces for cello and piano written by Nadia Boulanger in 1915, three years before the death of her sister Lili.
Wim Mertens is a Belgian composer, countertenor vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and musicologist. Mertens studied social and political science at the University of Leuven (graduating in 1975) and musicology at Ghent University; he also studied music theory and piano at the Royal Conservatories of Gent and Brussels. In 1978, he became a producer at the then BRT (Belgian Radio and Television). For Radio 2 (Radio Brabant) he produced concerts by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Urban Sax, and others, and hosted a program called Funky Town together with Gust De Meyer