Nonesuch Records wishes Philip Glass a very happy 75th birthday today. The composer celebrates with the US premiere of his Ninth Symphony by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. He previews the performance on WNYC's Soundcheck today at 2 PM ET. He was the subject of a feature profile on NPR's Morning Edition earlier today. "Composer Philip Glass changed the landscape of American music," says NPR. "Glass came up with a new way to make music, and with it, brought a new audience to the concert halls."
Nonesuch Records wishes Philip Glass a very happy 75th birthday today. The composer will celebrate by attending a performance in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium tonight by the American Composers Orchestra led by Conductor Laureate Dennis Russell Davies. On the program is the US premiere of Glass's Ninth Symphony. (Davies conducted three of the composer's earlier symphonies for recordings released on Nonesuch.) Tune in to New York NPR member station WNYC today at 2 PM ET, online at wnyc.org, to hear the composer discuss tonight's event and give a preview of the new piece on Souncheck with host John Schaefer.
Glass was the subject of a feature profile on NPR's Morning Edition this morning. "Composer Philip Glass changed the landscape of American music," says NPR's Tom Vitale. "As a founder of Minimalism, Glass came up with a new way to make music, and with it, brought a new audience to the concert halls."
Vitale spoke with the New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn, who describes Einstein on the Beach, Glass's groundbreaking 1976 collaboration with director Robert Wilson, as a turning point in the composer's career.
"It really was kind of a shot across the bow," Kozinn tells NPR. "It was done at the Metropolitan Opera. It was getting a lot of attention. And I think that piece is so big because it woke so many people up and told them that something new is happening in New Music. And it's not just more angular melodies and atonality. It's something completely else, and a lot of people are going to hear this."
Listen to the Morning Edition piece at npr.org.
Nonesuch recently reissued the 1993 recording of Einstein on the Beach. The reissue coincides both with Glass's 75th birthday and a rare international tour of the opera that began in previews at the Power Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, earlier this month. Einstein on the Beach will head next to Montpellier, France, in March for its official world premiere at Opéra Berlioz / Le Corum. For tour details, go to nonesuch.com/on-tour. To pick up a copy of the three-CD recording of Einstein on the Beach, head to the Nonesuch Store.
Philip Glass got a chance to celebrate his birthday early as well with a concert at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City on Sunday. Kronos Quartet, having just returned from a week-long residency at the Barbican in London, was among the evening's featured artists, performing Glass's arrangement of Bob Dylan's "Don’t Think Twice Ma, It's All Right," which Kronos performs on Chimes of Freedom, the newly released Amnesty International collection of artists performing Dylan.
Among the earliest Nonesuch albums for both Philip Glass and Kronos Quartet is the 1985 recording of Glass's score for Paul Schrader's film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. NPR's classical music blog Deceptive Cadence chose to celebrate Glass's birthday by examining the "haunting score" on this recording. "In Mishima, the author's biography unfolds to the sound of the Kronos Quartet," writes NPR's Mark Mobley, "while his final day plays out with dramatic string orchestra and percussion. Scenes from his fiction, played on a color-saturated soundstage, get some of Glass's most atmospheric music ..." Read more at npr.org/music.
To pick up a copy of the Mishima soundtrack or any of the albums in Philip Glass's Nonesuch catalog, head to the Nonesuch Store now.
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