Iconic BAM Artists
Philip Glass
Philip Glass, one of America's most celebrated composers, applied his musical encounters in India, North Africa, and the Himalayas to his own compositions and, by 1974, had created a large body of work in a distinct idiom. His early music inspired pieces by the Mabou Mines theater company, which he co-founded; he later formed his own performing group, the Philip Glass Ensemble. This period reached its apogee with Einstein on the Beach, a landmark in 20th-century music-theater presented at BAM's 1984 Next Wave Festival (and revived in 1992 and now again in 2012). Glass' work since that groundbreaking piece has included opera, film scores, dance music, symphonic work, string quartets, and unclassifiable work such as The Photographer/Far From the Truth (BAM, 1983) and 1000 Airplanes on the Roof. Glass has a rich performing history at BAM, including the world premieres of Low Symphony (1992) and Symphony No. 2 (1994); revivals of Einstein on the Beach in 1984 and 1992; The CIVIL warS, Act V-The Rome Section in 1986; the New York premieres of Orphée (1993) and La Belle et la Bête (1994), and a presentation of Les Enfants Terrible: Children of the Game (1996)-all parts of his operatic trilogy based on the work of Jean Cocteau; 1998's Monsters of Grace; a live musical performance accompanying a screening of Koyaanisqatsi (1999); and 1999's Dracula: The Music and Film, featuring the Kronos Quartet. Both Koyaanisqatsi and Dracula were reprised for the Philip on Film series at BAM in Spring 2000, alongside Anima Mundi and Powaqqatsi. Glass collaborated with director Mary Zimmerman for the opera Galileo Galilei, presented as part of the 20th anniversary season of the Next Wave Festival (2002). Glass' most recent work at BAM included the collaborative concert work Orion, and a program featuring Symphony No. 6 and No. 8-all part of the 2005 Next Wave Festival.
