Philip Glass

The Concerto Project Vol. III represents the third release in a series of four albums to be released by Orange Mountain Music documenting the eight Glass concertos. Volume III includes Glass’ “Concerto Grosso” Each movement of the "Concerto Grosso" is written for a distinctive group of instruments - the winds, brass and strings, which together make up a symphonic ensemble. It is performed by the Beethoven Orchester Bonn conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.

In the Upper Room is a dance/theater collaboration between choreographer Twyla Tharp and composer Philip Glass. This new recording marks the first complete musical document of the 1986 ballet. The first recording of the work, released on Sony’s Philip Glass “Dance Pieces,” presented only five of the nine movements of the work.

The Grand Master of minimal music, here portrayed with a cross-section of his major works - including his three undertook a "Portrait Trilogy" became known operas, each one of the personalities of contemporary violence: Akhenaten, Einstein and Gandhi

On this new recording from Orange Mountain Music, pianist Paul Barnes and renowned string quartet Brooklyn Rider collaborate on a new album of music by Philip Glass including two world premiere recordings of major works. The album begins with Philip Glass's 2018 Piano Quintet 'Annunciation' based on the 'Hymn of the Annunciation' from the Greek Orthodox tradition.

The New Seasons referred to in the title here are the so-called American Four Seasons, the Violin Concerto No. 2 of Philip Glass, which has even less of a connection to Vivaldi's model than do Astor Piazzolla's Buenos Aires Four Seasons and other works that take Vivaldi as a point of reference. The work is in eight sections, but which ones are supposed to represent which season is left up to the listener. It's really a typical but unusually effective example of late-period Glass, with the composer's usual textures intact but lots of harmonic motion. Part of the interest here lies in hearing Latvian violinist and conductor Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica, long champions of minimalism's Baltic branch, tackle a work by one of the leaders of Western minimalism. The American Four Seasons get a treatment that's a bit rougher than usual, but then Kremer turns around (after a Pärt girls' choir interlude) and delivers pristinely smooth, glassy textures in Giya Kancheli's Ex contrario. The program closes with a fascinating little melody by Japanese rock musician and film composer Shigeru Umebayashi, a daring and effective choice.

Philip Glass Solo is a collection of Glass performing some of his most enduring and beloved piano works. Recorded during the outset of the pandemic, the storied musician dedicated his new found time to revisiting some of his older piano music, occasionally reacquainting himself with these old friends, playing them for an audience of one in his home studio in New York.

The third in the Glass’ trilogy of operas about men who changed the world in which they lived through the power of their ideas, “Akhnaten”‘s subject is religion. The Pharaoh Akhnaten was the first monotheist in recorded story, and his substitution of a one-god religion for the multi-god worship in use when he came to power was responsible for his violent overthrow. The opera describes the rise, reign, and fall of Akhnaten in a series of tableaus. Libretto (Egyptian, Arcadian, Hebrew, and language of the audience) by the composer in association with Shalom Goldman, Robert Israel and Richard Riddell. Vocal text drawn from original sources by Shalom Goldman.

The music on this disc represents one of several collaborations between American minimalist composer Philip Glass and experimental Brazilian percussion group Uakti (say WOK-chee). The members of Uakti make their own instruments, both conventional and invented. Their collaboration with Glass is not simply a matter of performance – in this work, commissioned by a Brazilian dance company in 1993, they actually adapted Glass' materials for their own instruments. The first nine movements of Aguas da Amazonia (Waters of Amazonia) consist of the names of Brazilian rivers; the tenth movement, "Metamorphosis I," was added later, with instrumentation similar to the first nine.