Philip Glass in Residence
Philip Glass, one of the most influential contemporary composers, will be in
Stevens Point to perform a solo concert and conduct outreach to area high school
and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point students on Tuesday, April 5th and
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 as part of the Sentry Insurance Invitation to the
Arts Series “Year of Glass.”
Through his operas, his symphonies, his
compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging collaborations with
artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowie,
Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical
and intellectual life of his times.
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, and develops.
There has been nothing
“minimalist” about his 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.
On the afternoon of
Tuesday, April 5th, Glass will screen and speak with high school through
university students at the Sentry Insurance @1800 theater about his scoring of
the film Koyaanisqatsi, the Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance."
Created between 1975 and 1982, the film is an apocalyptic vision of the
collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the
environment. Following the screening, Glass will work with music composition
students from UW-Stevens Point.
Glass will also visit the Noel Fine Arts
Center on the morning of Wednesday, April 6th to interact with students. He will
participate in a music orchestration seminar during which he will critique a
student ensemble’s performance of the closing movement of his famous piece
“Glassworks.” Following the orchestration seminar, Glass will deliver a lecture
about creative collaborations in the arts to high school and university students
in Michelsen Hall.
Lectures, Workshops, & Demonstrations
The public is invited to experience a solo piano performance by Philip
Glass, “Etudes and Other Work for Solo Piano,” at Sentry’s @1800
theater on April 5th, at 7:30 p.m.