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Concert for Center for 21st Century Music to feature Glass
Inaugural concert to be held in conjunction with visit by Dalai Lama
By DAVID WEDEKINDT
Reporter Contributor
Philip Glass, considered to be one of the most important and influential American composers of the past century, will perform at the inaugural concert of UB's Center for 21st Century Music, to be held Sept. 18 in conjunction with the visit to UB by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Philip Glass in Quebec City
PHOTO: DENIS MÉTHOT
The concert, to feature the Slee Sinfonietta—UB's resident professional chamber orchestra—with Glass as special guest, will begin at 7 p.m. in the Mainstage theater in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
The evening's events also will include a presentation of a new work entitled "Chasmal" by David Felder, Birge-Cary Chair and director of the Center for 21st Century Music in the College of Arts and Sciences, and a video by Elliot Caplan, professor and director of the Center for the Moving Image in the Department of Media Study. The presentations will be held at 6:30 p.m. in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, adjacent to the CFA.
Glass will speak and answer questions from the audience following his concert. At 8:45 p.m., the Martin Scorsese film, "Kundun," the story of the early life of the 14th Dalai Lama—with an Academy-Award nominated score by Glass—will be shown in Lippes Concert Hall and in the Student Union Theater.
The CFA concert program will include the opening fanfare, "Epithalamium" by Charles Wuorinen, as well as the Glass compositions "Songs of Milarepa" and "Symphony No. 3."
"Songs of Milarepa" is a 24-minute work for baritone and chamber orchestra commissioned by Sagra Musicale Umbra (Umbra Sacred Music Festival). It is music set to poems by the 11th-century Tibetan saint and poet Milarepa. Glass arranged the texts in the form of a common Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
"Symphony No. 3" is a 24-minute work for string orchestra commissioned by the Würth Foundation for the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra.
A graduate of the University of Chicago and the Juilliard School, Glass spent two years in Paris during the early 1960s studying with Nadia Boulanger and earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar's Indian music into Western notation. Upon his return to New York, he applied these Eastern techniques to his own music.
By 1974, Glass had undertaken a number of significant and innovative projects, creating a large collection of new music for his performing group, The Philip Glass Ensemble, and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company, which he co-founded. This period culminated in "Music in Twelve Parts," followed by the landmark opera "Einstein on the Beach," created with Robert Wilson in 1976.
Glass has expanded his repertoire since "Einstein" to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra and film. His score for "Kundun" received an Academy-Award nomination, while his score for Peter Weir's "The Truman Show" won him a Golden Globe. His film score for Stephen Daldry's "The Hours" received Golden Globe, Grammy and Academy-Award nominations, and won a BAFTA in Film Music from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Glass remains a very active composer and touring artist. He has been a regular visitor to UB's contemporary musical events over the years, most recently as a resident artist at the 2003 June in Buffalo festival.
Tickets for the CFA concert are on sale at $25 for the general public, $15 for UB alumni and $10 for students. They may be purchased from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday in the CFA box office and at all Ticketmaster outlets, including Ticketmaster.com.
The evening's events in Lippes Concert Hall and in the Student Union Theater will be free and open to the public.
The CFA concert is made possible with major funding from Robert G. and Carol L. Morris, the Cameron Baird Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, UB, the New York State Music Fund and other sponsors.