WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2023
Stephane Wrembel, Music Director/Guitar
Angelo Debarre, Guitar
Serge Camps, Guitar
Franck Anastasio, Guitar
Ari Folman-Cohen, Bass
Josh Kaye, Guitar
Nick Driscoll, Woodwinds
Nick Anderson, Drums
Hugo Guezbar, Guitar
Adrien Marco, Guitar
Aurore Voilqué, Violinist/Vocalist
Jean-Michel Pilc, Pianist
SATURDAY MAY 4, 2024
Music composed by PHILIP GLASS
Directed by GODFREY REGGIO
Photography by RON FRICKE
Edited by ALTON WALPOLE/RON FRICKE
Performed by THE PHILIP GLASS ENSEMBLE
Conducted by Michael Riesman
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
1. Koyaanisqatsi
2. Organic
3. Clouds
4. Resource
5. Vessels
6. Pruitt-Igoe
7. Slo-Mo People
8. The Grid
9. Microchip-Prophecies
THE PHILIP GLASS ENSEMBLE
Michael Riesman – music director, keyboard
Lisa Bielawa – voice, keyboard
Dan Bora – sound
Peter Hess – saxophones
Ryan Kelly – onstage sound
Nelson Padgett – keyboard
Mick Rossi – keyboards
Sam Sadigursky – saxophone, flute
Andrew Sterman - flute, piccolo
Peter Stewart – keyboard, voice
Michael Amacio – tour/production manager
Andrew Sterman- managing member, PGE
The Philip Glass Ensemble is the exclusive performer of its repertoire. Please note that Philip Glass will not be performing as part of this concert. By special arrangement with Philip Glass and Dunvagen Music Publishers, Inc. The Philip Glass Ensemble is represented by Devi Reddy of Park Avenue Artists.
Ted Lambert, Executive Director
Jeff Mann, Marketing Director
Alex Koveos, Sr. Digital Media Manager
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Melay Araya, Artistic Director
Gloria Lee, Programming Manager
Carl Acampora, Production Manager
Dennis Rakauckas, Graphic Designer
Premiering in 1982, Koyaanisqatsi is a documentary without narration, characters, or dialogue, built around images and sound. In Koyaanisqatsi — the title is a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance” —director Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass observe cities, natural landscapes, and daily urban activities with a combination of slow-motion, sped-up images, and time-lapse footage framed and paced by music.
It suggests a meditation on the collision of urban life and our natural environment. The music in Koyaanisqatsi, one of the first examples of minimalism utilized in a soundtrack, was performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble (PGE) with guest musicians, conducted by Michael Riesman.
The Philip Glass Ensemble, conducted by Riesman, performs the iconic Glass score live, accompanying a full film screening of Koyaanisqatsi at The Town Hall on November 29 at 7pm. This production is scheduled on the week when Member States to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will meet at the United Nations. The Town Hall program is co-presented with Youth Arts New York’s Hibakusha Stories, a group that uses the testimony of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other communities impacted by radioactive violence to support nuclear weapons abolition.
Considering the history of Koyaanisqatsi, it is surprising to learn how Reggio and Glass arrived at their collaboration.
“Godfrey [Reggio] is a spiritual practitioner,” notes multi-instrumentalist Andrew Sterman, a performing member of the Philip Glass Ensemble since 1992 and also the group’s manager for the past two years. “He was a Christian monk living in Santa Fe who had joined a contemplative monastic community. He saw much of what was coming about the environment, surveillance, and dehumanization of modern living and said: ‘How do I reach the world? Well, Americans like movies.’ So he made Koyaanisqatsi. It was his first film. The result is a masterpiece that is even more relevant today than when it was made.”
“And Philip wasn’t eager to write film music,” says Sterman. “What he was interested in was this unique artistic collaboration.” In a 1990 interview, Glass observed that Koyaanisqatsi was “an equal collaboration in that we conceived the film as a real symbiosis of music and image. Because Godfrey aimed for a worldwide audience, the film had to convey its point entirely through these two
universal, international languages of image and sound. The point is that there was nothing that required translation.” Glass, Sterman notes, “wrote these pieces just based on the vibe of the discussions with the filmmaker. He constructed pieces of music that hold on their own and are well-paced. His sense of structure is superb. Godfrey had the brilliance to piece the film around the music — which was an incredibly good idea.”
The performance at Town Hall “is linked with the efforts for a nuclear disarmament treaty at the U.N.,” notes Sterman, specifically the Nobel Prizewinning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). “It’s an international coalition with partners in more than 100 countries advocating for a nuclear disarmament treaty that currently has 93 signatories and 73 member states. When ICAN asked us about the possibility of PGE playing 10 minutes of Koyaanisqatsi for the people working on the treaty, I proposed instead to do a whole performance and invite peace activists and people from the U.N. And, of course, Town Hall was the natural place.”
“The Ensemble has a history with Town Hall going back to 1974 when Phillip rented the venue to premiere Music in Twelve Parts, and we have played there many times since then. Town Hall jumped at the idea of having us perform Koyaanisqatsi.” It will be another signature event in what Sterman calls “a special relationship” with Town Hall, where PGE plans to return several times in 2024-25.
“The history of the Philip Glass Ensemble at the hall is momentous,” says Melay Araya, Town Hall’s Artistic Director. “So when they came to us for this concert with ICAN, we were happy to be part of it. This concert brings us together for a live score performance but also something much deeper.”
Sterman has performed the music of Koyaanisqatsi to a screening of the film countless times but also has seen it as an audience member, and its impact remains profound.
“This film, to me, feels liturgical,” he says. “It’s somber. It brings me home to humanity in a shocking fashion. The music seems almost like a requiem for the world — and yet it remains hopeful.”
Hibakusha Stories: https://hibakushastories.org/ Philip Glass Ensemble: https://philipglassensemble.com/
The Philip Glass Ensemble (PGE) comprises the principal performers of the music of Philip Glass. In 1968, Glass founded the PGE in New York City as a laboratory for his music. Its purpose was to develop a performance practice to meet the unprecedented technical and artistic demands of his compositions. In pioneering this approach, the PGE became a creative wellspring for Glass, and its members remain inimitable interpreters of his work.
The artists of the PGE recognize their unique position in the history of music of the past half-century, and passing on that legacy is part of their practice. A deep dedication to educating the next generation of musicians is integral to the PGE’s work, both on tour and as the Ensemble-in-Residence at The Philip Glass Institute at The New School.
The PGE debuted at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969, and in its early years performed primarily in the galleries, artist lofts, and museums of SoHo’s then-thriving artistic community. In the five decades since, the PGE has performed in world-renowned music festivals and concert halls across five continents, and has made records with Sony, Nonesuch, and Orange Mountain Music.
Many of Philip Glass’s most celebrated works were expressly composed for the PGE: its core concert pieces Music in Twelve Parts, Music in Similar Motion, and Music with Changing Parts; the opera and musical theater projects Einstein on the Beach, Hydrogen Jukebox, 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, Monsters of Grace; and the full-length dance works Dance (Lucinda Childs) and A Descent Into the Maelström (Australian Dance Theater). The PGE is most widely acclaimed for its soundtracks to Godfrey Reggio’s trilogy of wordless films: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi. It is also featured in Glass’s operas La Belle et la Bête and The Photographer
“The PGE represents the most authentic performance practice of my music in our time. I am looking forward to championing them as they carry it forward and bring its unique repertoire to new generations.” – Philip Glass
The Philip Glass Ensemble is the exclusive performer of its repertoire and is dedicated to bringing it to audiences worldwide. Philip Glass does not personally appear with the Ensemble unless otherwise noted on the tour calendar. By special arrangement with
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