125-432: The Philip Glass Ensemble is an American musical group founded by composer Philip Glass in 1968 to serve as a performance outlet for his experimental minimalist music . The ensemble continues to perform and record to this day, under the musical direction of keyboardist Michael Riesman . The Ensemble's instrumentation became a hallmark of Glass's early minimalist style. While the ensemble's instrumentation has varied over
250-748: A Primetime Emmy Award . He has also received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995, the National Medal of Arts in 2010, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2018, and the Grammy Trustees Award in 2020. Glass was born in Baltimore , Maryland , on January 31, 1937, the son of Ida (née Gouline) and Benjamin Charles Glass. His family were Latvian and Russian-Jewish emigrants. His father owned
375-469: A symphony ". 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), whereas Symphony No. 2 is described by Glass as a study in polytonality . He referred to
500-470: A twelve-tone string trio . In 1954, Glass traveled to Paris, where he encountered the films of Jean Cocteau , which made a lasting impression on him. He visited artists' studios and saw their work; Glass recalls, "the bohemian life you see in [Cocteau's] Orphée was the life I ... was attracted to, and those were the people I hung out with." Glass studied at the Juilliard School of Music where
625-478: A twelve-tone theme, sung by the soprano voice of the ensemble. "I had broken the rules of modernism and so I thought it was time to break some of my own rules", according to Glass. Though he finds the term minimalist inaccurate to describe his later work, Glass does accept this term for pieces up to and including Music in 12 Parts , excepting this last part which "was the end of minimalism" for Glass. As he pointed out: "I had worked for eight or nine years inventing
750-543: A "first extension out of a triadic harmonic language", an experiment with the polytonality of his teachers Persichetti and Milhaud , a musical technique which Glass compares to "an optical illusion, such as in the paintings of Josef Albers ". Glass again collaborated with Robert Wilson on another opera, the CIVIL warS (1983, premiered in 1984), which also functioned as the final part (the Rome section) of Wilson's epic work by
875-542: A "viscous bath of pure, thick energy", concluding "this was actually the most detailed music I'd ever heard. It was all intricacy, exotic harmonics ". In 1970, Glass returned to the theatre, composing music for the theatre group Mabou Mines , resulting in his first minimalist pieces employing voices: Red Horse Animation and Music for Voices (both 1970, and premiered at the Paula Cooper Gallery ). After differences of opinion with Steve Reich in 1971, Glass formed
1000-590: A 2011 interview, Glass stated that Franz Schubert—with whom he shares a birthday—is his favorite composer. He studied the flute as a child at the Peabody Preparatory of the Peabody Institute of Music . At the age of 15, he entered an accelerated college program at the University of Chicago where he studied mathematics and philosophy. In Chicago, he discovered the serialism of Anton Webern and composed
1125-576: A Scandal (2006). He also composed the scores for Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Hamburger Hill (1987), The Thin Blue Line (1988), The Truman Show (1998), and The Illusionist (2006). Glass is known for composing several operas such as Einstein on the Beach (1976), Satyagraha (1980), Akhnaten (1983), The Voyage (1992), and The Perfect American (2013). He also wrote
1250-701: A commission from the Netherlands Opera (as well as a Rockefeller Foundation grant) which "marked the end of his need to earn money from non-musical employment". With the commission Glass continued his work in music theater, composing his opera Satyagraha (composed in 1978–1979, premiered in 1980 at Rotterdam), based on the early life of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa, Leo Tolstoy , Rabindranath Tagore , and Martin Luther King Jr. For Satyagraha , Glass worked in close collaboration with two " SoHo friends":
1375-402: A curtain staring into one camera, which feeds into a teleprompter-like device on the camera in front of the interviewee, which causes the interviewee to look at and talk to the image of Morris, and, therefore, the camera directly, rather than to a person sitting off to one side. The final scene, in which Morris and Harris are only heard, while shots of a tape recorder appear from various angles,
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#17328518296111500-477: A film about Dr. James Grigson , a psychiatrist known in Texas as "Dr. Death" for testifying with "100 percent certainty" of a defendant's recidivism in many trials, including that of Randall Adams. The film centers around the "inconsistencies, incongruities and loose ends" of the case, and Morris, through his investigation, not only comes to a different conclusion, but actually obtains an admission of Adams's innocence by
1625-639: A libretto by David Henry Hwang , was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera for the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus ; and White Raven (1991), about Vasco da Gama , a collaboration with Robert Wilson and composed for the closure of the 1998 World Fair in Lisbon. Especially in The Voyage , the composer "explore[d] new territory", with its "newly arching lyricism", " Sibelian starkness and sweep", and "dark, brooding tone ...
1750-523: A more and more traditional and lyrical style. In these works, Glass often employs old musical forms such as the chaconne and the passacaglia —for instance in Satyagraha , the Violin Concerto No. 1 (1987), Symphony No. 3 (1995), Echorus (1995) and also recent works such as Symphony No. 8 (2005), and Songs and Poems for Solo Cello (2006). A series of orchestral works originally composed for
1875-584: A music director and composer 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
2000-433: A name for himself by giving testimony in capital cases for the prosecution. Under the law in Texas, the death penalty can only be issued if the jury is convinced that the defendant is not just guilty, but will commit violent crimes in the future if not put to death. In almost every instance, Dr. Grigson would, after examining a defendant, testify that he had found the individual in question to be an incurable sociopath , who he
2125-485: A narrator. Morris is often credited with re-purposing film noir aesthetic to the documentary format. Film scholar Charles Musser has credited Morris for using 'fiction film' techniques in The Thin Blue Line. Morris himself has claimed all of his films are brazenly "anti-vérité" in style. Morris presented the characters like in fiction films, not typical documentaries. He chose not to include official labels for
2250-400: A note to Errol Morris pushing him to promote the film better during interviews. The note read, in part, "Heard your NPR interview and you were boring," and recommended the director sell the movie as a highly thrilling and emotional experience similar to watching thrillers or horror movies and that he adopt the usage of shorter and clearer sentences. The Thin Blue Line grossed $ 1,209,846 in
2375-951: A now-famous portrait of Glass). (Glass returned the compliment in 2005 with A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close for piano.) With 1+1 and Two Pages (composed in February 1969), Glass turned to a more "rigorous approach" to his "most basic minimalist technique, additive process", pieces which were followed in the same year by Music in Contrary Motion and Music in Fifths (a kind of homage to his composition teacher Nadia Boulanger , who pointed out " hidden fifths " in his works but regarded them as cardinal sins). Eventually Glass's music grew less austere, becoming more complex and dramatic, with pieces such as Music in Similar Motion (1969), and Music with Changing Parts (1970). These pieces were performed by
2500-615: A performance of works by Steve Reich (including the ground-breaking minimalist piece Piano Phase ), which left a deep impression on him; he simplified his style and turned to a radical " consonant vocabulary". Finding little sympathy from traditional performers and performance spaces, Glass eventually formed an ensemble with fellow ex-student Jon Gibson , and others, and began performing mainly in art galleries and studio lofts of SoHo . The visual artist Richard Serra provided Glass with Gallery contacts, while both collaborated on various sculptures, films and installations; from 1971 to 1974, he
2625-518: A piano-four-hands version of the score); together they started to plan another opera, to be premiered at the Stuttgart State Opera . While planning a third part of his "Portrait Trilogy", Glass turned to smaller music theatre projects such as the non-narrative Madrigal Opera (for six voices and violin and viola, 1980), and The Photographer , a biographic study on the photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1982). Glass also continued to write for
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#17328518296112750-467: A previously established history. Stanford Law Review author Richard Sherwin believes The Thin Blue Line actually presents two plots. He says Morris presents one plot through the construction and ordering of the non-linear story, revealing an easy-to-follow narrative implicating Harris instead of Adams, not unlike the story that implicated Adams in the first place, because it presents an easy-to-believe retelling of history. The other plot, Sherwin says,
2875-557: A radio adaption of Constance DeJong 's novel Modern Love ("Part Three", 1978). "Part Two" and "Part Four" were used (and hence renamed) in two dance productions by choreographer Lucinda Childs (who had already contributed to and performed in Einstein on the Beach ). "Part Two" was included in Dance (a collaboration with visual artist Sol LeWitt , 1979), and "Part Four" was renamed as Mad Rush , and performed by Glass on several occasions such as
3000-539: A real affinity for the French text and sets the words eloquently, underpinning them with delicately patterned instrumental textures". 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
3125-439: A record store and his mother was a librarian . In his memoir, Glass recalls that at the end of World War II his mother aided Jewish Holocaust survivors , inviting recent arrivals to America to stay at their home until they could find a job and a place to live. She developed a plan to help them learn English and develop skills so they could find work. His sister, Sheppie, would later do similar work as an active member of
3250-428: A reflection of its increasingly chromatic (and dissonant ) palette", as one commentator put it. Glass remixed the S'Express song "Hey Music Lover", for the b-side of its 1989 release as a single. 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
3375-418: A reputation as Baltimore's leading source of modern music. Glass built a sizable record collection from the unsold records in his father's store, including modern classical music such as Hindemith , Bartók , Schoenberg , Shostakovich and Western classical music including Beethoven's string quartets and Schubert 's B ♭ Piano Trio . Glass cites Schubert's work as a "big influence" growing up. In
3500-527: A result of publicity around the film, Adams (whose death sentence had been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 and subsequently commuted to life in prison by the Governor of Texas, Bill Clements ) had his conviction overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals , and the case was returned to Dallas County for a retrial. The district attorney's office declined to prosecute the case again, and Adams
3625-579: A score drawn from existing Glass compositions created for other media including an excerpt from Akhnaten ; and In the Upper Room , Twyla Tharp , 1986), music for theatre productions Endgame (1984) and Company (1983). Beckett vehemently disapproved of the production of Endgame at the American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, Massachusetts), which featured JoAnne Akalaitis 's direction and Glass's Prelude for timpani and double bass, but in
3750-459: 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). Glass then left Paris for northern India in 1966, where he came in contact with Tibetan refugees and began to gravitate towards Buddhism . He met Tenzin Gyatso , the 14th Dalai Lama , in 1972, and has been a strong supporter of
3875-631: A series of five concerts, and three symphonies centered on orchestra-singer and orchestra-chorus interplay. Two symphonies, Symphony No. 5 "Choral" (1999) and Symphony No. 7 " Toltec " (2004), and the song cycle Songs of Milarepa (1997) have a meditative theme. The operatic Symphony No. 6 Plutonian Ode (2002) for soprano and orchestra was commissioned by the Brucknerhaus, Linz, and Carnegie Hall in celebration of Glass's sixty-fifth birthday, and developed from Glass's collaboration with Allen Ginsberg (poet, piano—Ginsberg, Glass), based on his poem of
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4000-408: A system, and now I'd written through it and come out the other end." He now prefers to describe himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures". Glass continued his work with a series of instrumental works, called Another Look at Harmony (1975–1977). For Glass, this series demonstrated a new start, hence the title: "What I was looking for was a way of combining harmonic progression with
4125-588: A version for string orchestra, being performed by ensembles ranging from student orchestras to renowned formations such as the Kronos Quartet and the Kremerata Baltica . This interest in writing for the string quartet and the string orchestra led to a chamber and orchestral film score for Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters ( Paul Schrader , 1984–85), which Glass recently described as his "musical turning point" that developed his "technique of film scoring in
4250-404: A very special way". Glass also dedicated himself to vocal works with two sets of songs, Three Songs for chorus (1984, settings of poems by Leonard Cohen , Octavio Paz and Raymond Lévesque ), and a song cycle initiated by CBS Masterworks Records : Songs from Liquid Days (1985), with texts by songwriters such as David Byrne , Paul Simon , in which the Kronos Quartet is featured (as it
4375-527: A violin concerto for a fellow student, Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild. After leaving Juilliard in 1962, Glass moved to Pittsburgh and worked as a school-based composer-in-residence in the public school system, composing various choral, chamber, and orchestral music. In 1964, Glass received a Fulbright Scholarship ; his studies in Paris with the eminent composition teacher Nadia Boulanger , from autumn of 1964 to summer of 1966, influenced his work throughout his life, as
4500-436: Is a way his camera has of framing his subjects so that we look at them very carefully, learning as much by what we see as by what we hear." Desson Thomson gave the film a perfect score, saying the film was "more like a waking nightmare than a docudrama. A true story of murder and justice evidently miscarried, wrapped in the fictional haze of a surrealistic whodunit, it will leave you in a trance for days." The Thin Blue Line
4625-486: Is an American composer and pianist . He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism , being built up from repetitive phrases and shifting layers. Glass describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped to evolve stylistically. He founded the Philip Glass Ensemble , which
4750-476: Is an example of "postmodern skepticism". Within this notion Sherwin notes sociologist Jean Baudrillard 's interpretation of the postmodern media landscape as "flattening" meaning as well as the impossibility of the existence of "truth, authority, and history". Sherwin criticizes The Thin Blue Line for failing to resolve what he calls an "acausal" plot, referring to certain details about the case that were presented but remain unanswered, such as where Adams actually
4875-557: Is in Mishima ) in a prominent role. Glass also continued his series of operas with adaptations from literary texts such as The Juniper Tree (an opera collaboration with composer Robert Moran , 1984), Edgar Allan Poe 's The Fall of the House of Usher (1987), and also worked with novelist Doris Lessing on the opera The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1985–86, and performed by
5000-546: Is set to the visuals of the 1946 Jean Cocteau film , with the help of four vocalists. In early September 2014 the ensemble performed with Steve Reich and other musicians at the Brooklyn Academy of Music 's "Next Wave Festival." It had been over thirty years since Glass and Reich had shared a stage. In February 2018, the ensemble performed with the San Francisco Girls Chorus at Carnegie Hall . They performed
5125-693: Is still in existence, but Glass no longer performs with the ensemble. He has written 15 operas , numerous chamber operas and musical theatre works, 14 symphonies , 12 concertos , nine string quartets , various other chamber music pieces, and many film scores . He has received nominations for four Grammy Awards for including two for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Satyagraha (1987) and String Quartet No. 2 (1988). He has received three Academy Award for Best Original Score nominations for Martin Scorsese 's Kundun (1997), Stephen Daldry 's The Hours (2002), and Richard Eyre 's Notes on
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5250-512: Is true. Prior to working on this film, Morris worked for several years as a private detective investigating fraudulent transactions on the stock market in New York City. Once fascinated by the Adams/Harris case, he applied those skills to his research on the film. Harris was later tried, convicted, and executed for committing the unrelated murder of Mark Walker Mays on September 1, 1985. On
5375-420: Is very clear and very traditional; it's almost classical in sound", as the conductor Dennis Russell Davies notes. The Thin Blue Line (1988 film) The Thin Blue Line is a 1988 American documentary film by Errol Morris , about the trial and conviction of Randall Dale Adams for the 1976 shooting of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood. Morris became interested in the case while doing research for
5500-547: The Chicago Tribune , named it the 7th best film of 1988. Kim Newman from Empire called the film "riveting and terrifying. Highly recommended testimony to the dangers of shoddy investigations." Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, and wrote that "Morris' visual style in The Thin Blue Line is unlike any conventional documentary approach. Although his interviews are shot straight on, head and shoulders, there
5625-608: The Cleveland Orchestra , the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra , and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra : The Light (1987), The Canyon (1988), and Itaipu (1989). While composing for symphonic ensembles, Glass also composed music for piano, with the cycle of five movements titled Metamorphosis (adapted from music for a theatrical adaptation of Franz Kafka 's The Metamorphosis ), and for
5750-857: The Errol Morris film The Thin Blue Line , 1988. In the same year Glass met the poet Allen Ginsberg by chance in a book store in the East Village of New York City, and they immediately "decided on the spot to do something together, reached for one of Allen's books and chose Wichita Vortex Sutra ", a piece for reciter and piano which in turn developed into a music theatre piece for singers and ensemble, Hydrogen Jukebox (1990). Glass also returned to chamber music; he composed two String Quartets ( No. 4 Buczak in 1989 and No. 5 in 1991), and chamber works which originated as incidental music for plays, such as Music from "The Screens" (1989/1990). This work originated in one of many theater music collaborations with
5875-526: The Houston Grand Opera and English National Opera in 1988). Compositions such as Company , Facades and String Quartet No. 3 (the last two extracted from the scores to Koyaanisqatsi and Mishima ) gave way to a series of works more accessible to ensembles such as the string quartet and symphony orchestra , in this returning to the structural roots of his student days. In taking this direction his chamber and orchestral works were also written in
6000-680: The International Rescue Committee . Glass developed his appreciation of music from his father, discovering later his father's side of the family had many musicians. His cousin Cevia was a classical pianist , while others had been in vaudeville . He learned his family was also related to Al Jolson . Glass's father often received promotional copies of new recordings at his music store. Glass spent many hours listening to them, developing his knowledge and taste in music. This openness to modern sounds affected Glass at an early age: My father
6125-578: The Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Current TV placed the film 2nd on their list of 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die in 2011. In a 2014 Sight and Sound poll, film critics voted The Thin Blue Line the fifth best documentary film of all time. The film was parodied in Season 1 of Documentary Now! as "The Eye Doesn't Lie". Morris's investigation suggested that five witnesses committed perjury . As
6250-606: The Philip Glass Ensemble in the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969 and in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1970, often encountering hostile reaction from critics, but Glass's music was also met with enthusiasm from younger artists such as Brian Eno and David Bowie (at the Royal College of Art ca. 1970). Eno described this encounter with Glass's music as one of the "most extraordinary musical experiences of [his] life", as
6375-499: 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). Glass's prolific output in the 1990s continued to include operas with an opera triptych (1991–1996), which the composer described as an "homage" to writer and film director Jean Cocteau , based on his prose and cinematic work: Orphée (1950), La Belle et la Bête (1946), and
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#17328518296116500-410: The "improvisatory chords" of its beginning a toccata of Froberger or Frescobaldi , and 18th century music. Two years later, the concerti series continued with Piano Concerto No. 2: After Lewis and Clark (2004), composed for the pianist Paul Barnes . The concerto celebrates the pioneers' trek across North America, and the second movement features a duet for piano and Native American flute . With
6625-509: The 1st-century-Roman playwright Seneca and allusions to the music of Giuseppe Verdi and from the American Civil War , featuring the 19th century figures Giuseppe Garibaldi and Robert E. Lee as characters. In the mid-1980s, Glass produced "works in different media at an extraordinarily rapid pace". Projects from that period include music for dance ( Glass Pieces choreographed for New York City Ballet by Jerome Robbins in 1983 to
6750-529: The Philip Glass Ensemble (while Reich formed Steve Reich and Musicians ), an amplified ensemble including keyboards, wind instruments (saxophones, flutes), and soprano voices. Glass's music for his ensemble culminated in the four-hour-long Music in Twelve Parts (1971–1974), which began as a single piece with twelve instrumental parts but developed into a cycle that summed up Glass's musical achievement since 1967, and even transcended it—the last part features
6875-449: The Philip Glass Ensemble originated as music for film and TV: North Star (1977 score for the documentary North Star: Mark di Suvero by François de Menil and Barbara Rose ) and four short cues for the children's TV series Sesame Street named Geometry of Circles (1979). Another series, Fourth Series (1977–79), included music for chorus and organ ("Part One", 1977), organ and piano ("Part Two" and "Part Four", 1979), and music for
7000-637: The Tibetan independence ever since. Glass' musical style is instantly recognizable, with its trademark churning ostinatos , undulating arpeggios and repeating rhythms that morph over various lengths of time atop broad fields of tonal harmony. That style has taken permanent root in our pop-middlebrow sensibility. Glass' music is now indelibly a part of our cultural lingua franca , just a click away on YouTube. John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune writer Shortly after arriving in New York City in March 1967, Glass attended
7125-607: The US and Canada. On its opening weekend, in only one theatre, it took in $ 17,814. Although the film is the 95th highest grossing documentary film released since 1982, Morris says he lost money on the production. The Thin Blue Line made its DVD premiere in July 2005 from MGM. In Australia, the film was released on DVD by Umbrella Entertainment in June 2007. The DVD includes Umbrella Entertainment trailers as special features. A special edition Blu-ray of
7250-643: The audience which consisted mainly of visual and performance artists who were highly sympathetic to Glass's reductive approach. Apart from his music career, Glass had a moving company with his cousin, the sculptor Jene Highstein , and also worked as a plumber and cab driver (during 1973 to 1978). He recounts installing a dishwasher and looking up from his work to see an astonished Robert Hughes , Time magazine's art critic, staring at him. During this time, he made friends with other New York-based artists such as Sol LeWitt , Nancy Graves , Michael Snow , Bruce Nauman , Laurie Anderson , and Chuck Close (who created
7375-413: The certainty of events surrounding the murder case into question, Morris positions the film as a postmodern text . Referring to theorist Fredric Jameson 's framework, film critic Linda Williams writes that documentaries that seek only to reveal the past support the notion of an "intensified nostalgia for a past that is already lost". Conversely, The Thin Blue Line suggests Adams's innocence by clouding
7500-560: The chamber opera The Sound of a Voice , Glass's Piano Concerto No. 2 might be regarded as bridging his traditional compositions and his more popular excursions to World Music , also found in Orion (also composed in 2004). Waiting for the Barbarians , an opera from J. M. Coetzee 's novel (with the libretto by Christopher Hampton ), had its premiere performance in September 2005. Glass defined
7625-615: The circumstances of Randall Dale Adams's conviction. Grigson does not appear in the final cut of the film. The film presents a series of interviews about the investigation of the shooting of Dallas police officer Robert Wood and a re-enactment of the crime based on the testimony and recollections of Adams, Harris (the actual murderer), the judge presiding over the case (Donald J. Metcalfe), and several witnesses (including Emily Miller and R. L. Miller), as well as detectives (including Gus Rose, Jackie Johnson, and Marshall Touchton). Two attorneys (Edith James and Dennis White) who represented Adams at
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#17328518296117750-544: The co-author of Einstein on the Beach , Robert Wilson , on Monsters of Grace (1998), and created a biographic opera on the life of astronomer Galileo Galilei (2001). In the early 2000s, Glass started a series of five concerti with the Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2000, premiered by Dennis Russell Davies as conductor and soloist), and the Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra (2000, for
7875-407: The composer admitted in 1979: "The composers I studied with Boulanger are the people I still think about most— Bach and Mozart ." Glass later wrote in his autobiography Music by Philip Glass in 1987 that the new music performed at Pierre Boulez 's Domaine Musical concerts in Paris lacked any excitement for him (with the notable exceptions of music by John Cage and Morton Feldman ), but he
8000-435: The composer's personal life: the opera was composed after the unexpected death in 1991 of Glass's wife, artist Candy Jernigan : "... One can only suspect that Orpheus' grief must have resembled the composer's own", K. Robert Schwartz suggests. The opera's "transparency of texture, a subtlety of instrumental color, ... a newly expressive and unfettered vocal writing" was praised, and The Guardian 's critic remarked "Glass has
8125-530: 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
8250-548: The concert hall commenced with the three-movement Violin Concerto No. 1 (1987). This work was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra and written for and in close collaboration with the violinist Paul Zukofsky and the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, who since then has encouraged the composer to write numerous orchestral pieces. The Concerto is dedicated to the memory of Glass's father: "His favorite form
8375-403: The conventions of fiction filmmaking. The film's re-enactment scenes were built carefully from witnesses' statements. Morris is commonly credited with the invention of re-enactment scenes in documentary format, though this is untrue. Although the film recreates several versions of the shooting, it does not recreate one in which David Harris shoots the officer, the interpretation which it argues
8500-532: The director JoAnne Akalaitis , who originally asked the Gambian musician Foday Musa Suso "to do the score [for Jean Genet 's The Screens ] in collaboration with a western composer". Glass had already collaborated with Suso in the film score to Powaqqatsi ( Godfrey Reggio , 1988). Music from "The Screens" is on occasion a touring piece for Glass and Suso (one set of tours also included percussionist Yousif Sheronick ), and individual pieces found their way into
8625-523: The documentary category for an Academy Award . In a 2008 retrospective of documentaries, Variety credited the film as "the most political work of cinema in the last 20 years". The film has had a considerable influence on later television and documentary film, often credited with pioneering the style of modern crime-scene reenactments. In 2001, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by
8750-404: The end, he authorized the music for Company , four short, intimate pieces for string quartet that were played in the intervals of the dramatization. This composition was initially regarded by the composer as a piece of Gebrauchsmusik ('music for use')—"like salt and pepper ... just something for the table", as he noted. Eventually Company was published as Glass's String Quartet No. 2 and in
8875-563: The ensemble performed a series of concerts in an installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Temple of Dendur exhibit. From 2012 until late 2015 the ensemble has presented, along with many other performers, a revival of Einstein on the Beach which opened in Montpellier, France in 2012. In 2013 the ensemble began to perform Glass's opera, La Belle et la Bête again. The opera
9000-556: 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. 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 )
9125-435: The film "transition from the arthouse to the multiplex". Harvey Weinstein , the former head of Miramax, declared: "Never has Miramax had a movie where a man's life hangs in the balance". The poster for the film gave it the feel of a whodunit , with the tagline: "A softcore movie, Dr. Death , a chocolate milkshake, a nosy blonde and The Carol Burnett Show . Solving this mystery is going to be murder." Weinstein even sent
9250-523: The film was released in North America by the Criterion Collection in March 2015. New features include interviews with Morris and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer . The Thin Blue Line holds a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 18 reviews. It has an average score of 79 out of 100 on Metacritic , based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Gene Siskel , writing for
9375-429: The film". 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
9500-527: The films by Cocteau. The inspiration of the first part of the trilogy, Orphée (composed in 1991, and premiered in 1993 at the American Repertory Theatre ) can be conceptually and musically traced to Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice ( Orphée et Euridyce , 1762/1774), which had a prominent part in Cocteau's 1949 film Orphee . One theme of the opera, the death of Eurydice , has some similarity to
9625-681: The first opera of his portrait opera trilogy: Einstein on the Beach . Composed in spring to fall of 1975 in close collaboration with Wilson, Glass's first opera was first premiered in summer 1976 at the Festival d'Avignon , and in November of the same year to a mixed and partly enthusiastic reaction from the audience at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Scored for the Philip Glass Ensemble, solo violin, chorus, and featuring actors (reciting texts by Christopher Knowles , Lucinda Childs and Samuel M. Johnson), Glass's and Wilson's essentially plotless opera
9750-424: The first public appearance of the 14th Dalai Lama in New York City in fall 1981. The piece demonstrates Glass's turn to more traditional models: the composer added a conclusion to an open-structured piece which "can be interpreted as a sign that he [had] abandoned the radical non-narrative, undramatic approaches of his early period", as the pianist Steffen Schleiermacher points out. In spring 1978, Glass received
9875-569: 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". 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
10000-558: The inability of academy voters to appreciate innovative film making." In 2001, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Prior to the conception of The Thin Blue Line , Morris originally planned to film a documentary about prosecution psychiatrist Dr. James Grigson , known as Doctor Death, who testified in more than 100 trials that resulted in death sentences. As an expert psychiatrist, Dr. Grigson made
10125-509: The inmates he had testified against in court. It was during this preliminary research that Morris met Randall Dale Adams, and learned of his case. Grigson had told the jury that Adams would be an ongoing menace if kept alive, but Morris, after meeting Adams, became skeptical that he committed the crime. Dr. Grigson's interviews often lasted less than an hour and were arbitrary at best, often asking inmates to copy doodles. Morris later chose to refocus his research efforts into an investigation on
10250-456: The interviewees, causing the viewers to determine who is who throughout the film. He includes documents, but presents them artistically, ignoring authenticity signs. Philip Glass's musical score is played under interviewees' statements, which was unconventional in documentaries, but Morris used it as "movie music" to create a film-like experience . Morris has often associated The Thin Blue Line with film noir, further emphasizing its connection to
10375-540: The keyboard was his main instrument. His composition teachers included Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma . Fellow students included Steve Reich and Peter Schickele . In 1959, he was a winner in the BMI Foundation 's BMI Student Composer Awards, an international prize for young composers. In the summer of 1960, he studied with Darius Milhaud at the summer school of the Aspen Music Festival and composed
10500-656: The language of the audience. Akhnaten was commissioned by the Stuttgart Opera in a production designed by Achim Freyer . It premiered simultaneously at the Houston Opera in a production directed by David Freeman and designed by Peter Sellars . At the time of the commission, the Stuttgart Opera House was undergoing renovation, necessitating the use of a nearby playhouse with a smaller orchestra pit. Upon learning this, Glass and conductor Dennis Russell Davies visited
10625-413: The media portrayed it that way." Morris, for his part, recalled: "When [Adams] got out, he became very angry at the fact that he had signed a release giving me rights to his life story. And he felt as though I had stolen something from him. Maybe I had, maybe I just don't understand what it's like to be in prison for that long, for a crime you hadn't committed. In a certain sense, the whole crazy deal with
10750-566: The music of Honegger , Milhaud , and Villa-Lobos as possible models for his symphony. 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 Russell Davies), and Echorus (1994/95), a more transparent, refined, and intimate chamber-orchestral style paralleled the excursions of his large-scale symphonic pieces. In
10875-418: The nice things about Cambridge, Massachusetts is that ' Baudrillard ' isn't in the phone book. To me, there's a physical world out there, pure and simple. There's a world where things actually happen. In The Thin Blue Line, it was of all-consuming importance to figure out who was driving that car; who pulled the gun out from underneath the seat, who shot the cop. Questions like these are not up for grabs." In
11000-473: The ninety-minute Music With Changing Parts , the work's debut performance with women's chorus and an extremely important concert as this piece is considered to have changed music in the 1970s. Glass has also collaborated with them on their most recent album, Final Answer, and many of his works are featured in performance by SFGC (artistically directed by Ensemble vocalist and keyboardist Lisa Bielawa ). Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937)
11125-414: The novel Les Enfants terribles (1929, later made into a film by Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville , 1950). In the same way the triptych is also a musical homage to the work of the group of French composers associated with Cocteau, Les Six (and especially to Glass's teacher Darius Milhaud), as well as to various 18th-century composers such as Gluck and Bach whose music featured as an essential part of
11250-419: The opera ... bearing witness to the unfolding events. Here time stands still. There is only music, and the movement of children through space" (Glass). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Glass's lyrical and romantic styles peaked with a variety of projects: operas, theatre and film scores ( Martin Scorsese 's Kundun , 1997, Godfrey Reggio 's Naqoyqatsi , 2002, and Stephen Daldry 's The Hours , 2002),
11375-574: The orchestra with the score of Koyaanisqatsi ( Godfrey Reggio , 1981–1982). Some pieces which were not used in the film (such as Façades ) eventually appeared on the album Glassworks (1982, CBS Records), which brought Glass's music to a wider public. The "Portrait Trilogy" was completed with Akhnaten (1982–1983, premiered in 1984), a vocal and orchestral composition sung in Akkadian , Biblical Hebrew , and Ancient Egyptian . In addition, this opera featured an actor reciting ancient Egyptian texts in
11500-463: 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". Some of the pieces also appeared in different versions such as in the theatre music to Robert Wilson's Persephone (1994, commissioned by
11625-531: The original suspect of the case, David Harris. The " thin blue line " in the title "refers to what Mr. Morris feels is an ironic, mythical image of a protective policeman on the other side of anarchy". The film won many awards, but was a controversial film among documentary film critics, who felt the use of reenactment had no place in the documentary format. For this reason, the film was not nominated for an Academy Award, though it won several other awards for best documentary. Roger Ebert "attributed its rejection to
11750-647: The perpetrator. Sherwin argues that for the film to succeed as an affirmative postmodern work, it must contextualize the past events within a present narrative. He argues that it should take on the challenge, through the clouding of history, of resisting the lure of a narrative and fulfilling "their sworn duty to convict only in the absence of reasonable doubt." In an interview at the Museum of Modern Art , Morris denied being postmodern in any way, and quipped: "I am no post-modernist. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts . And one of
11875-430: The playhouse, placing music stands around the pit to determine how many players the pit could accommodate. The two found they could not fit a full orchestra in the pit. Glass decided to eliminate the violins, which had the effect of "giving the orchestra a low, dark sound that came to characterize the piece and suited the subject very well". As Glass remarked in 1992, Akhnaten is significant in his work since it represents
12000-405: The police are the " thin blue line " separating society from " anarchy ". This is a re-working of a line from Rudyard Kipling 's poem " Tommy " in which he describes British soldiers (nicknamed " Tommy Atkins ") as the "thin red line", from the color of their uniforms and their formation. The film makes use of dramatic re-enactments, a composed score, and interview testimony that takes the place of
12125-420: The release was fueled by my relationship with his attorney. And it's a long, complicated story, but I guess when people are involved, there's always a mess somewhere." Despite being wrongly imprisoned for twelve years, Adams received no payment from the state of Texas. Had Adams been found to be wrongly convicted under today's law in Texas, he would get $ 80,000 for each year of incarceration. However, since Adams
12250-423: The repertoire of Glass and the cellist Wendy Sutter. Another collaboration was a collaborative recording project with Ravi Shankar , initiated by Peter Baumann (a member of the band Tangerine Dream ), which resulted in the album Passages (1990). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Glass's projects also included two highly prestigious opera commissions based on the life of explorers: The Voyage (1992), with
12375-405: The rhythmic structure I had been developing, to produce a new overall structure. ... I'd taken everything out with my early works and it was now time to decide just what I wanted to put in—a process that would occupy me for several years to come." Parts 1 and 2 of Another Look at Harmony were included in a collaboration with Robert Wilson , a piece of musical theater later designated by Glass as
12500-631: The same conclusion, comparing the solo violin music to Johann Sebastian Bach , and the "organ figures ... to those Alberti basses Mozart loved so much". The piece was praised by The Washington Post as "one of the seminal artworks of the century". Einstein on the Beach was followed by further music for projects by the theatre group Mabou Mines such as Dressed like an Egg (1975), and again music for plays and adaptations from prose by Samuel Beckett , such as The Lost Ones (1975), Cascando (1975), Mercier and Camier (1979). Glass also turned to other media; two multi-movement instrumental works for
12625-728: The same name, originally planned for an "international arts festival that would accompany the Olympic Games in Los Angeles". (Glass also composed a prestigious work for chorus and orchestra for the opening of the Games, The Olympian: Lighting of the Torch and Closing ). The premiere of The CIVIL warS in Los Angeles never materialized and the opera was in the end premiered at the Opera of Rome. Glass's and Wilson's opera includes musical settings of Latin texts by
12750-561: The same name. Besides writing for the concert hall, Glass continued his ongoing operatic series with adaptions from literary texts: The Marriages of Zones 3, 4 and 5 ([1997] story-libretto by Doris Lessing), In the Penal Colony (2000, after the story by Franz Kafka ), and the chamber opera The Sound of a Voice (2003, with David Henry Hwang), which features the Pipa , performed by Wu Man at its premiere. Glass also collaborated again with
12875-500: The score: I had the good fortune of actually convincing him [Philip Glass] to write the soundtrack himself. Someone asked me, 'Why Philip Glass?' And I said, 'because he does existential dread better than anybody. He's the master of existential dread.' Marketing the film was not an easy task, as Morris wished to avoid having the label of documentary attached to his film. Miramax, the film's distributor, had originally picked it up for its unconventional look, and used marketing hooks to make
13000-481: The scores for Broadway productions such as the revivals of The Elephant Man (2002), The Crucible (2016), and King Lear (2019). For the later he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play . Over his career Glass has received several awards including a BAFTA Award , a Drama Desk Award , and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards , four Grammy Awards , and
13125-490: The timpanist Jonathan Haas). The Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (2001) had its premiere performance in Beijing, featuring cellist Julian Lloyd Webber ; it was composed in celebration of his fiftieth birthday. These concertos were followed by the concise and rigorously neo-Baroque Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra (2002), demonstrating in its transparent, chamber orchestral textures Glass's classical technique, evocative in
13250-411: The trial where he was convicted also appear; they suggest that Adams was charged with the crime despite the evidence against Harris because Harris was a juvenile at the time, whereas Adams, as an adult, could be sentenced to death under Texas law. The prosecutor (Douglas D. Mulder) does not appear in the film. The film's title comes from prosecutor Doug Mulder's phrase during his closing argument that
13375-569: The weekend of that murder, Morris had an interview scheduled with Harris. Morris remarked in an interview with James Hughes: "I often say it's my favorite excuse for missing an appointment: 'I'm sorry, I was off killing someone.'" Morris's interview style (that of the subject staring directly into the camera) led to a later invention that his wife termed "the Interrotron". It was first used in Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997), and places Morris behind
13500-502: The work as a "social/political opera", as a critique on the Bush administration 's war in Iraq, a "dialogue about political crisis ", and an illustration of the "power of art to turn our attention toward the human dimension of history". While the opera's themes are Imperialism , apartheid , and torture , the composer chose an understated approach by using "very simple means, and the orchestration
13625-554: The writer Constance deJong , who provided the libretto, and the set designer Robert Israel. This piece was in other ways a turning point for Glass, as it was his first work since 1963 scored for symphony orchestra, even if the most prominent parts were still reserved for solo voices and chorus. Shortly after completing the score in August 1979, Glass met the conductor Dennis Russell Davies , whom he helped prepare for performances in Germany (using
13750-421: The years, it has generally consisted of amplified woodwinds (typically saxophones, flutes, and bass clarinet), keyboard synthesizers, and solo soprano voice (singing solfeggio ). After Glass wrote his first opera, Einstein on the Beach , for the ensemble in 1976, he began to compose for other instrumentation more frequently, but he still retains the core ensemble instrumentation. In 2011, individuals from
13875-473: Was "one hundred percent certain" would kill again. In pursuit of creating this idea, Morris sought and received funding for the initial project from the Public Broadcasting Service. Morris also received funding from Endowment of Public Arts. Using this grant, Morris was able to initially interview Grigson. During this meeting, Grigson suggested to Morris that his research should begin with all
14000-641: Was Serra's regular studio assistant. Between summer of 1967 and the end of 1968, Glass composed nine works, including Strung Out (for amplified solo violin, composed in summer of 1967), Gradus (for solo saxophone, 1968), Music in the Shape of a Square (for two flutes, composed in May 1968, an homage to Erik Satie ), How Now (for solo piano, 1968) and 1+1 (for amplified tabletop, November 1968) which were "clearly designed to experiment more fully with his new-found minimalist approach". The first concert of Glass's new music
14125-430: Was at Jonas Mekas 's Film-Makers Cinemathèque ( Anthology Film Archives ) in September 1968. This concert included the first work of this series with Strung Out (performed by the violinist Pixley-Rothschild) and Music in the Shape of a Square (performed by Glass and Gibson). The musical scores were tacked on the wall, and the performers had to move while playing. Glass's new works met with a very enthusiastic response by
14250-414: Was conceived as a " metaphorical look at Albert Einstein : scientist, humanist, amateur musician—and the man whose theories ... led to the splitting of the atom", evoking nuclear holocaust in the climactic scene, as critic Tim Page pointed out. As with Another Look at Harmony , " Einstein added a new functional harmony that set it apart from the early conceptual works". Composer Tom Johnson came to
14375-454: Was deeply impressed by new films and theatre performances. His move away from modernist composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen was nuanced, rather than outright rejection: "That generation wanted disciples and as we didn't join up it was taken to mean that we hated the music, which wasn't true. We'd studied them at Juilliard and knew their music. How on earth can you reject Berio ? Those early works of Stockhausen are still beautiful. But there
14500-481: 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. 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 . In parallel with his early excursions in experimental theatre, Glass worked in winter 1965 and spring 1966 as
14625-607: Was just no point in attempting to do their music better than they did and so we started somewhere else." 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, and Glass made friends with American visual artists (the sculptor Richard Serra and his wife Nancy Graves ), actors and directors ( JoAnne Akalaitis , Ruth Maleczech , David Warrilow , and Lee Breuer , with whom Glass later founded
14750-497: Was not originally planned. Morris's camera broke down on the day of the interview, forcing Morris to use a tape recorder to document the dialogue. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting , National Endowment for the Arts , Program Development Company Productions Inc., public television stations, and The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies funded the documentary. The film was scored by composer Philip Glass . The original film soundtrack
14875-399: Was placed on more critics' top ten lists than any other film of 1988, edging out Bull Durham by one vote. The film won several awards. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences refused to consider it for Best Documentary because of its use of reenactments . Since the film was marketed as "nonfiction" rather than as a documentary, it was disqualified from being considered in
15000-518: Was published by Dunvagen Music Publishers, Inc. The music for the original film was produced by Kurt Munkasci, and the performing orchestra conducted by Michael Riesman. Morris has claimed that prior to Glass's involvement in the project, he personally edited The Thin Blue Line to a mix-tape of Glass's earlier works, including selections from Mishima and In the Upper Room and Glassworks. In an interview with Marc Glassman of POV magazine , Morris explained his rationale for seeking Glass to compose
15125-462: Was released because his case was dismissed, and not because he was pardoned, he received no payment from the state after his release for his wrongful conviction. Adams later worked as an anti- death penalty activist . He died of brain cancer in October 2010 at the age of 61, but lived in such anonymity that his death was not discovered by the media until June 2011. Some scholars believe that by calling
15250-534: Was self-taught, but he ended up having a very refined and rich knowledge of classical, chamber, and contemporary music. Typically he would come home and have dinner, and then sit in his armchair and listen to music until almost midnight. I caught on to this very early, and I would go and listen with him. The elder Glass promoted both new recordings and a wide selection of composers to his customers, sometimes convincing them to try something new by allowing them to return records they did not like. His store soon developed
15375-515: Was subsequently ordered released as a result of a habeas corpus hearing in 1989. After Adams's release from prison, he ended up in a legal battle with Morris concerning the rights to his story. The matter was settled out of court after Adams was granted sole use of anything written or made on the subject of his life. Adams himself said of the matter: "Mr. Morris felt he had the exclusive rights to my life story. I did not sue Errol Morris for any money or any percentages of The Thin Blue Line , though
15500-435: Was the night of the crime (Adams himself answers this question by stating that he was watching TV in his motel room and fell asleep, but this is left without conclusive explanation, with Adams's brother, who was in the motel room at the time, not appearing in the movie to corroborate the explanation). Instead, the end of the film abandons the "acausal" plot by returning to the easy-to-believe narrative, that which paints Harris as
15625-723: Was the violin concerto, and so I grew up listening to the Mendelssohn , the Paganini , the Brahms concertos. ... So when I decided to write a violin concerto, I wanted to write one that my father would have liked." Among its multiple recordings, in 1992, the Concerto was performed and recorded by Gidon Kremer and the Vienna Philharmonic . This turn to orchestral music was continued with a symphonic trilogy of "portraits of nature", commissioned by
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