Philip Glass Ensemble Presents KOYAANISQATSI LIVE

Considered to be one of the most influential composers ever to work in film, Philip Glass has reinvented the relationship between music and the moving image. Glass turns 80 in 2017, and to celebrate Texas Performing Arts presents a unique musical and cinematic experience!

The Philip Glass Ensemble, conducted by long time music director Michael Riesman, delivers a live performance to accompany a screening of Godfrey Reggio's 1982 "environmental masterpiece," KOYAANISQATSI. An apocalyptic vision of the collision of urban life, technology, and the environment, KOYAANISQATSI LIVE! - Life out of Balance is an intense performance experience where Glass brings new life to this cinematic classic.

Created between 1975 and 1982, KOYAANISQATSI is Reggio's debut as a film director and producer, and is the first film of the Qatsi trilogy. Other films in the trilogy are Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi. KOYAANISQATSI is a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance."

Established by composer Philip Glass, the Philip Glass Ensemble (PGE) held its first performance in May 1969 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Embraced first by the visual art community working in SoHo in the early 1970s, early concerts by the PGE were considered visual as well as musical events and were often performed in art galleries, artist lofts, and museum spaces rather than traditional performing art centers.

Since that time, the members of the PGE are recognized as the premiere performers of Philip Glass' compositions and continue to be an inspiration for new work. Over the past 30 years, the group has performed on four continents in some of the world's most prestigious music festivals and concert venues. They have been featured in Philip Glass' opera Einstein on the Beach as well as the music theater projects Hydrogen Jukebox; 1000 Airplanes on the Roof; The Photographer; La Belle et la Bête; and Monsters of Grace.

Pre-Performance conversation with KOYAANISQATSI producer/director Godfrey Reggio & Dr. Paul Stekler, Chair of UT's Department of Radio-Television-Film

Friday, February 23,2018, 8:00 PM Bass Concert Hall stage - directly before the performance

Godfrey Reggio is a pioneer of a film style that creates poetic images of extraordinary emotional impact for audiences worldwide. Reggio is prominent in the film world for his Qatsi trilogy, essays of visual images and sound that chronicle the destructive impact of the modern world on the environment. Reggio, who spent 14 years in silence and prayer while studying to be a monk, has a history of service not only to the environment but to youth street gangs, the poor, and the community as well.

Paul Stekler's documentaries about American politics have won numerous national honors including multiple Emmys, Peabodys and du-Pont-Columbia Journalism awards, and have all been aired nationally on PBS. His films include Sundance Special Jury Prize winner George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire, the Peabody Award-winning Vote for Me: Politics in America (a two night national special), three films that aired on PBS's POV series (Last Man Standing: Politics Texas Style; Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics; and Getting Back to Abnormal, a film about New Orleans and race relations after Katrina), and two of the Eyes on the Prize civil rights history series films. His most recent project, Postcards from the Great Divide, made with longtime partners Louis Alvarez and Andy Kolker, was a series of nine short films about politics in nine states, that was launched on the Washington Post's politics website and broadcast on PBS.

Fun Facts:

· Glass' evolving new musical style was eventually dubbed "minimalism." Glass disliked the term and prefers "music with repetitive structures."

· In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than twenty operas, ten symphonies, two piano concertos and concertos for violin, piano, timpani, and saxophone quartet and orchestra, film scores and other projects.

· Glass was nominated for Best Score at the Academy Awards three times for Kundun, The Hours, and Notes on a Scandal.

· Glass has a brief cameo in The Truman Show, which he scored, where he can be seen playing piano.

For more information on this performance, please visit:

https://texasperformingarts.org/season/philip-glass-ensemble-KOYAANISQATSI-bass-concert-hall-2018

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