Philip Glass
About
Biography
Filmography
Family & Companions
Bibliography
Notes
Among his many honors, Glass has received a Broadcast Music Industry Award (1960), a Lado Prize (1961), Benjamin Awards (1961 and 1962), Young Composer's Awards from the Ford Foundation (1964-66), a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts award (1970-71) and a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1974-75).
Music America named him "Musician of the Year" in 1985.
Biography
Celebrated avant-garde composer Philip Glass carved out a significant niche for himself with innovative and bold orchestrations that won him an international reputation and cult following as the most recognized practitioner of minimalism. "Rolling Stone" has called the creator of the ground-breaking operatic classic "Einstein on the Beach" (1976) the most important living composer, and he has effectively employed his hypnotic arpeggios, staggered pacing and measured chord movements to enhance the visual elements in films, both documentary and fiction.
The grandson of Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Russia, Glass developed an early love for music working in his father's record store in Baltimore. He graduated from the University of Chicago with an AB (math and philosophy) in 1956 and received his MA (composition) from Juilliard in 1962 before going to Paris to study with Nadine Boulanger on a Fulbright scholarship. In Paris, he came under the influence of sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, embracing not only the addictive rhythmical structure of Eastern music, but also the spiritual world to which Shankar introduced him, Buddhism. After transcribing the legendary sitarist's music into notation readable by French musicians, Glass journeyed to India and discovered the massive population of displaced Tibetans, whom he has assisted ever since, performing benefits and speaking out against their mistreatment.
The success of "Einstein on the Beach" had as much to do with its theatrical presentation as the music. With strong roots in the theater as a director and co-founder of the Mabou Mines company, Glass collaborated with director-designer Robert Wilson on "Einstein," the two arguing that opera can do without narrative action and conventional arias. They have worked together frequently since on projects like "the CIVIL warS" (1982) and "The White Raven (O Corvo Blanco)" (1998). Glass's second opera "Satyagraha" (1980), about Gandhi and nonviolent political resistance, continued on the path blazed in "Einstein," its music remaining on its own rhapsodic plane, a symbol of a higher, liberating force which Gandhi taps. He completed his trilogy based on great men with "Akhnaten" (1984).
Glass has drawn inspiration from a variety of sources, including the movies of Jean Cocteau (who died in 1963) and the pioneering albums of the David Bowie-Brian Eno collaboration in the late 70s. In 1990, he began composing a trilogy of operas using Cocteau's films "Orphee," "La Belle et la Bete" and "Les Enfants Terribles" as libretti, and the performance of "Les Enfants Terribles" in 1997 brought that cycle to a close. Glass first adapted Bowie-Eno with his "Low" Symphony in 1991 and followed with the "Heroes" Symphony (c. 1997). Twyla Tharp used the works for her dance company, and Glass later assembled the six movements into a stand-alone symphony. He has also collaborated with pop-music artists Suzanne Vega and Richard James, aka The Aphex Twin.
Glass, who has notched more than a dozen film scores, brilliantly complemented the fluid, poetic images of Godfrey Reggio's "Koyaanisqatsi" (1982) and "Powaqqatsi" (1988) and also co-directed with Reggio the documentary short "Anima Mundi/The Soul of the World" (1991). He provided music for Paul Schrader's highly stylized "Mishima: A Life in Four Acts" (1985) and ex-wife JoAnne Akalaitis' documentary "Dead End Kids" (1986). His music also greatly enhanced the Errol Morris documentaries "The Thin Blue Line" (1988) and "A Brief History of Time" (1992). Among his more notable scores for fictional movies, Glass scored "Candyman" (1992) and its sequel "Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh" (1995) and "Bent" (1997), before undertaking a subject very close to his heart with Martin Scorsese's "Kundun" (1997), a biographical portrait of the current Dalai Lama. Having previously recorded Gyuto monks of the Drupka Order along with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and Japanese artist Kitaro, he worked the monks into the fabric of the "Kundun" score, fusing Tibetan and Western music into something that was pure Glass.
Glass' unconcern for beginnings and endings operates more in the manner of Nature than our egos, and of course that is the message of the Dalai Lama: The individual must learn to transcend selfish personal concerns to become in tune with the larger world of nature and mankind. He continues to add to his unique oeuvre, producing a wide variety of music for film, dance, opera, ensemble and symphony orchestra without remaining a prisoner of minimalism, but despite harmony creeping into his later work, Glass still celebrates mathematical profundity as he counts his successes.
Filmography
Cast (Feature Film)
Music (Feature Film)
Special Thanks (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Cast (Special)
Music (Special)
Music (Short)
Music (TV Mini-Series)
Life Events
1962
Was composer-in-residence, Pittsburgh Public Schools
1964
Went to Paris on a Fulbright grant to study with Nadia Boulanger
1965
First gained modicum of notice with "Music for Play", composed for a Mabou Mimes productions
1967
Hitchhiked through Africa and India, after which he returned to New York
1968
Formed the Philip Glass Ensemble
1969
With wife JoAnne Akalaitis and others, co-founded Mabou Mines theater coompany (date approximate)
1971
Created his own Chatham Square Productions in order to record his works
1974
Composed the six-hour piece "Music In 12 Parts", considered a landmark in minimalism
1974
Signed by the British rock label Virgin
1975
Composed first opera, "Einstein on the Beach," which toured throughout the USA and Europe; collaborated with stage director and scenic designer Robert Wilson
1975
Feature debut, as an actor, appearing in the experimental drama, "What Maisie Knew"
1978
First feature music credit, "North Star: Mark Disuvero"
1980
Composed the opera "Satyagraha"
1982
First collaboration with Godfrey Reggio, "Koyaanisqatsi"
1982
Signed an exclusive composer's contract with CBS Masterworks, and released "Glassworks"
1983
Debut as a song performer, also credited for songs, Jim McBride's remake of "Breathless"
1984
Appeared as himself in "Modern American Composers I"
1985
Early TV music credit for the PBS special, "High Wire"
1985
Contributed score to Paul Schrader's "Mishima: A Life in Four Acts"
1986
Colaborated with director-wife JoAnne Akalaitis on documentary "Dead End Kids"
1986
Premiere broadcast on PBS of "Einstein on the Beach"
1988
Provided score that heightened the hypnotic effect of Errol Morris' landmark documentary "The Thin Blue Line"
1988
Collaborated with David Henry Hwang and Jerome Sirlin on the performance piece "1000 Airplanes on the Roof"
1988
Reteamed with Reggio for "Powaqqatsi"
1989
First on-screen TV appearance, also credited for music and as a music performer, "Timeless Voices: The Gyuto Monks" (The Discovery Channel)
1990
Began composing a trilogy of operas using films of Jean Cocteau as librettos ("Orphee", "La Belle et la Bete" and "Les Enfants Terribles")
1990
Network TV debut, provided music for the ABC special, "Peter Jennings Reporting: Guns"
1991
Third teaming with Godfrey Reggio, "Anima Mundi/The Soul of the World"
1991
Credited for music supervision on the feature, "Closet Land"
1992
Wrote music for the eerie psychological thriller "Candyman"
1992
Premiered the opera "The Voyage", a commission from New York City's Metropolitan Opera
1992
Provided music for "Compassion in Exile: The Story of the 14th Dalai Lama", originally broadcast on PBS
1992
Second collaboration with Errol Morris, "A Brief History of Time"
1995
Scored the sequel "Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh"
1997
Composed score for Martin Scorsese's "Kundun", a film biography of the Dalai Lama
1997
Enhanced sparse visual look of Sean Mathias' "Bent"
1998
Contributed to the musical score for the motion picture "The Truman Show"
1998
One of five collaborations with director-designer Wilson, "White Raven (O Corvo Blanco)", premiered in Lisbon; commissioned ten years earlier, it told the story of Portugueese explorer Vasco da Gamma
1999
Composed new score for the 1931 classic "Dracula"
2002
Reteamed with Godfrey Reggio for "Naqoyqatasi", the third in the trilogy of films
2002
Composed score for the feature drama "The Hours"; received nominations for a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Original Score; earned a grammy nomination
2002
In honor of his 65th birthday, premiered "Symphony No. 6"
2004
Composed the music for the feature "Secret Window"
2006
Composed the score for Neil Burger's "The Illusionist"
2006
Received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score for Richard Eyre's "Notes on a Scandal"
Family
Companions
Bibliography
Notes
Among his many honors, Glass has received a Broadcast Music Industry Award (1960), a Lado Prize (1961), Benjamin Awards (1961 and 1962), Young Composer's Awards from the Ford Foundation (1964-66), a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts award (1970-71) and a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1974-75).
Music America named him "Musician of the Year" in 1985.
His repetitive minimalist style inspired comedian Emo Phillips to joke: "A friend of mine gave me a Philip Glass record. I listened to it for five hours before I realized it had a scratch on it."
"There has been an idea in a lot of cases that if you're in Hollywood, people don't take your music seriously. But if you've been writing symphonies and operas and then do movies, it's OK. I'm forgiven for doing the films. No one holds it against me. If I started out as a film music composer it would have been hard to be taken seriously (in the classical arena). Shostakovich made a living doing film music. That's how he survived." --Philip Glass quoted in Chicago Tribune, January 11, 1998.
Throughout this period [the early 1970s], Glass supported himself as a New York cabbie and as a plumber, occupations that often led to unusual encounters. "I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo," he says. "While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. 'But you're Philip Glass! What are you doing here?' It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. 'But you are an artist,' he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish." --From The Guardian, November 24, 2001.
