Glass founded the Philip Glass Ensemble, with which he still performs on keyboards. He has written fifteen operas, numerous chamber operas and musical theatre works, fourteen symphonies, twelve concertos, nine string quartets and various other chamber music, and many film scores. Three of his film scores have been nominated for an Academy Award.
During this time, he encountered revolutionary films of the French New Wave, such as those of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, which upended the rules set by an older generation of artists,[29] and Glass made friends with American visual artists (the sculptor Richard Serra and his wife Nancy Graves),[30] actors and directors (JoAnne Akalaitis, Ruth Maleczech, David Warrilow, and Lee Breuer, with whom Glass later founded the experimental theatre group Mabou Mines). Together with Akalaitis (they married in 1965), Glass in turn attended performances by theatre groups including Jean-Louis Barrault's Odéon theatre, The Living Theatre and the Berliner Ensemble in 1964 to 1965.[31] These significant encounters resulted in a collaboration with Breuer for which Glass contributed music for a 1965 staging of Samuel Beckett's Comédie (Play, 1963). The resulting piece (written for two soprano saxophones) was directly influenced by the play's open-ended, repetitive and almost musical structure and was the first one of a series of four early pieces in a minimalist, yet still dissonant, idiom.[23] After Play, Glass also acted in 1966 as music director of a Breuer production of Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, featuring the theatre score by Paul Dessau.
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In parallel with his early excursions in experimental theatre, Glass worked in winter 1965 and spring 1966 as a music director and composer[32] on a film score (Chappaqua, Conrad Rooks, 1966) with Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha, which added another important influence on Glass's musical thinking. His distinctive style arose from his work with Shankar and Rakha and their perception of rhythm in Indian music as being entirely additive. He renounced all his compositions in a moderately modern style resembling Milhaud's, Aaron Copland's, and Samuel Barber's, and began writing pieces based on repetitive structures of Indian music and a sense of time influenced by Samuel Beckett: a piece for two actresses and chamber ensemble, a work for chamber ensemble and his first numbered string quartet (No. 1, 1966).[33]
After these operas, Glass began working on a symphonic cycle, commissioned by the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, who told Glass at the time: "I'm not going to let you ... be one of those opera composers who never write a symphony".[57] Glass responded with a pair of three-movement symphonies ("Low" [1992], and Symphony No. 2 [1994]); his first in an ongoing series of symphonies is a combination of the composer's own musical material with themes featured in prominent tracks of the David Bowie/Brian Eno album Low (1977),[58] whereas Symphony No. 2 is described by Glass as a study in polytonality. He referred to the music of Honegger, Milhaud, and Villa-Lobos as possible models for his symphony.[59] With the Concerto Grosso (1992), Symphony No. 3 (1995), a Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra (1995), written for the Rascher Quartet (all commissioned by conductor Dennis Russel Davies), and Echorus (1994/95), a more transparent, refined, and intimate chamber-orchestral style paralleled the excursions of his large-scale symphonic pieces. In the four movements of his Third Symphony, Glass treats a 19-piece string orchestra as an extended chamber ensemble. In the third movement, Glass re-uses the chaconne as a formal device; one commentator characterized Glass's symphony as one of the composer's "most tautly unified works".[60][61] The third Symphony was closely followed by a fourth, subtitled Heroes (1996), commissioned the American Composers Orchestra. Its six movements are symphonic reworkings of themes by Glass, David Bowie, and Brian Eno (from their album "Heroes", 1977); as in other works by the composer, it is also a hybrid work and exists in two versions: one for the concert hall, and another, shorter one for dance, choreographed by Twyla Tharp.
Another commission by Dennis Russell Davies was a second series for piano, the Etudes for Piano (dedicated to Davies as well as the production designer Achim Freyer); the complete first set of ten Etudes has been recorded and performed by Glass himself. Bruce Brubaker and Dennis Russell Davies have each recorded the original set of six. Most of the Etudes are composed in the post-minimalist and increasingly lyrical style of the times: "Within the framework of a concise form, Glass explores possible sonorities ranging from typically Baroque passagework to Romantically tinged moods".[62] Some of the pieces also appeared in different versions such as in the theatre music to Robert Wilson's Persephone (1994, commissioned by the Relache Ensemble) or Echorus (a version of Etude No. 2 for two violins and string orchestra, written for Edna Mitchell and Yehudi Menuhin 1995).
For the second opera, La Belle et la Bête (1994, scored for either the Philip Glass Ensemble or a more conventional chamber orchestra), Glass replaced the soundtrack (including Georges Auric's film music) of Cocteau's film, wrote "a new fully operatic score and synchronize[d] it with the film".[24] The final part of the triptych returned again to a more traditional setting with the "Dance Opera" Les Enfants terribles (1996), scored for voices, three pianos and dancers, with choreography by Susan Marshall. The characters are depicted by both singers and dancers. The scoring of the opera evokes Bach's Concerto for Four Harpsichords, but in another way also "the snow, which falls relentlessly throughout the opera ... bearing witness to the unfolding events. Here time stands still. There is only music, and the movement of children through space" (Glass).[65][66]
In 1999, he finished a new soundtrack for the 1931 film Dracula. The Hours (2002) earned him a second Academy Award nomination. The circular, recurring nature of Glass' music has been praised for providing stability and contrast to frequent jumps across time and geography in the film's narrative. In this way, the soundtrack has a distinctive personality, so much so that director Stephen Daldry believes Glass's music serves as "another stream of consciousness, another character"[121] in the film. The Hours was followed by another Morris documentary, The Fog of War (2003). In the mid-2000s Glass provided the scores to films such as Secret Window (2004), Neverwas (2005), The Illusionist and Notes on a Scandal, garnering his third Academy Award nomination for the latter. Glass's most recent film scores include No Reservations (Glass makes a brief cameo in the film sitting at an outdoor café), Cassandra's Dream (2007), Les Regrets (2009), Mr Nice (2010), the Brazilian film Nosso Lar (2010) and Fantastic Four (2015, in collaboration with Marco Beltrami). In 2009, Glass composed original theme music for Transcendent Man, about the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil by filmmaker Barry Ptolemy.
Musical Opinion said, "Philip Glass must be one of the most influential living composers."[136] The National Endowment for the Arts, while noting that many of his operas have been produced by the world's leading opera houses said, "He is the first composer to win a wide, multigenerational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film, and in popular music."[137] Classical Music Review called his opera Akhnaten "a musically sophisticated and imposing work."[138]
The cocktail hour may or may not be an extension of your ceremony postlude, depending on how and where you have your reception set up in relation to your ceremony. If you have hired a harpist or string quartet for your ceremony, consider having them perform throughout the cocktail hour as well–here the string quartet could play a balanced mix of classical, broadway show tunes, and contemporary arrangements, such as Sting or the Beatles. If your guests have had to travel to a new location, you may want to change the style and genre of your music to reflect a more party-like atmosphere, such as an elegant jazz trio. Our musicians are very aware of style, taste, and volume as they are often performing music as your guests mingle around the bar and cocktail area.
The entrance of the bride and groom to the reception is really the first time that you will be introduced to your family and friends as husband and wife, and you want to choose music that is appropriate for this moment. With our hosting and music performance, we generally like to make this a grand entrance, with a drum roll and all the bells and whistles. There are numerous choices for classical music that will create a feeling of grandeur. Remember, this is your special day, and you and your fiancé you may want to choose popular rock or R&B songs such as "Simply the Best" from Tina Turner, or a contemporary song that is special to the both of you. One great combination that our orchestra performs is the Sinatra classic "Fly Me to The Moon" which we preceded by "The Best Is Yet To Come" for everyone in the wedding party before the bride and groom. Because the song will most likely not be playing long, you have the freedom to choose a song that has a great chorus, even if you do not want the rest of the song played.
During the dinner reception hour, we can provide you with solo piano, jazz trio, optional strolling violin, harp, and string quartet, playing your favorite music selections, ranging from classical to Broadway show tunes, as well as elegant jazz and tasteful contemporary arrangements. Our sound tech knows that at this time music must be at an appropriate volume–never obtrusive to your guests socializing. 2ff7e9595c
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