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Philip Glass 75th Birthday Concert
Sunday, October 21, 2012 at 7:00 pm
PONCHO Hall, 710 East Roy Street, Seattle, WA
Through his operas, symphonies, and compositions for his own ensemble, as well as his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp and Allen Ginsberg, to Woody Allen and David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times. His 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.
Glass was born in 1937 and grew up in Baltimore. He studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (who also taught Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones) and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble – seven musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds, amplified and fed through a mixer. The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.
There has been nothing “minimalist” about Glass’ 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, and saxophone quartet and orchestra; soundtracks to films ranging from new scores for the stylized classics of Jean Cocteau to Errol Morris’s documentary about former defense secretary Robert McNamara; string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others. He presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.
About the Performers
Saint Helens String Quartet
Taking its inspiration from the exquisite rugged natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, the Saint Helens String Quartet embraces a sense of musical adventure, exploring an often uncharted sonic territory in which contemporary classical music intersects with genres including jazz, pop, rock, folk and world music. Called the "Saint Helens adventurous four" by the Seattle Weekly, the group makes a practice of commissioning and performing works by 20th century composers. As recipients of the 2007 Jack Straw Artist residence award, the quartet is currently recording a debut CD featuring the works of northwest composer Ken Benshoof, Bern Herbolsheimer, Erwin Schulhoff, and Peter Schickele. The quartet works with Seattle public schools through the Seattle Chamber Music Festival where they present the children's concerts as well as chamber music outreach. They have appeared at the Lopez Island Community Center, Cornish College of the Arts, Town Hall, Holly Schoolhouse in Seabeck, Benaroya Recital Hall, Snohomish Second Sundays series, and Bach on the Dock on Lake Union.
Attend
Ticketing for this event has closed.
Ticket prices for this event were $20 general, $15 seniors, $10 students and alumni (with ID) , $10 Cornish community (w/ID)
This event took take place
Sunday, October 21, 2012 at 7:00 pm
PONCHO Hall, 710 East Roy Street, Seattle, WA
Tickets are also available by phone at Brown Paper Tickets, 1.800.838.3006
