Philip Glass' Days and Nights Festival Returns This Weekend

The acclaimed Days and Nights Festival, founded and curated by Philip Glass, returns for its 2014 edition this weekend, September 25-28 with four days of performances in Big Sur and Carmel, CA. Highlights of the long weekend include public radio host Ira Glass' new live show, Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host; Brian Greene's Icarus at the Edge of Time accompanied by a live performance of Glass' score conducted by Michael Riesman; an evening of music and spoken word with Glass on piano, spoken word artist Jerry Quickley and renowned instrumentalists Tim Fain (vioin), Matt Haimovitz (cello) and Jaron Lanier; and a screening of Visitors, the latest collaboration between Glass and director Godfrey Reggio, accompanied by a live Q&A. Tickets go on sale July 1-see below for schedule and details.

Free film screening events will also take place during the day on Saturday and Sunday at Carmel's Sunset Cultural Center. Curated by California State University, Monterey Bay faculty member Enid Balder Ryce, the series includes a screening of H20MX. This 2013 Mexican documentary meticulously examines water issues of Mexico City and makes an urgent call for committed action to solve that city's water woes-a poignant and topical subject for California today. In addition to screenings, the daytime events will include participatory gatherings of visual and sound artists and workshops for children. Full schedule to be announced soon.

Glass envisions the Days and Nights Festival as encompassing and nurturing the arts in a way that welcomes the future while exploring the seminal developments in the arts throughout history. Future seasons will delve ever further into the evolution of the arts across time and space.

The composer has chosen Big Sur and the surrounding area, world famous for its beauty, as the future home of the Philip Glass Center for the Arts, Science and the Environment. Over time, the Center will develop a broad array of interdisciplinary activities including live (filmed and recorded) performance, exhibitions, seminars and publications. "The Days and Nights Festival was my first step towards the establishment of a center," notes Glass. "The idea was to present a condensed sample of the work intended for the Center."

For more than five decades, Glass continues to be at the forefront of contemporary music and art. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar's Indian music into Western notation. By 1974, Glass had a number of innovative projects, creating a large collection of new music for The Philip Glass Ensemble and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company. This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts and the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, for which he collaborated with Robert Wilson. Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra and film. His scores have received Academy Award nominations (Kundun, The Hours, Notes on a Scandal) and a Golden Globe (The Truman Show). Several new works have been unveiled, including The Perfect American (2013, Teatro Real Madrid), Book of Longing, a collaboration with Leonard Cohen (2007, Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity) and Appomattox (2007, San Francisco Opera), an opera about the end of the Civil War.