September 5, 2002
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu
Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble perform Shorts, a rousing live concert and film event, at the Arlington Theatre
Summary Facts:
- Shorts, performed by Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble
- Philip Glass is one of the most esteemed living composers
- Six short films accompanied by live music
- Part of Philip on Film, a celebration of Glass’s 25 years of ground-breaking film composing
- The six films are directed by Atom Egoyan, Peter Greenaway, Godfrey Reggio, Shirin Neshat and Michal Rovner
- Co-presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in association with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the UCSB Department of Film Studies
- Wednesday, October 16 / 8 pm
- Arlington Theatre
- Pre-performance Meet-the-Artist discussion at 7 pm
- General: $35/$25, UCSB students: $20
- Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535 or the Arlington Ticket Office at 963-4408
Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble will perform live, accompanying six films on a bill called Shorts on Wednesday, October 16 at 8 pm at the Arlington Theatre. This unique event, co-presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, is the first major collaboration between the two arts presenters. For this project, Philip Glass invited Atom Egoyan, Peter Greenaway, Shirin Neshat and Michal Rovner—widely recognized pioneers in the worlds of independent film, video and visual art—to create silent short films for which he then wrote new musical scores. The program also features live concert screenings of “Evidence” and “Anima Mundi,” films by Glass’s frequent collaborator, Godfrey Reggio. The evening will provide one of the rarest and most sublime pleasures in film going—the thrilling synchronized performance of live music to film. Kyle Gann of the Village Voice writes, “Shorts shows that, in his sixties, [Glass is] still capable of exciting new breakthroughs.” The LA Weekly claims, “These shorts powerfully resonate with current experiences of strife, exile and destruction, but Glass’s music envelops them in fluid, repetitive rhythms that are by turns exhilarating and elegiac, lifting them out of the specific into transcendent experience.”
Philip Glass is one of the most lauded and prolific living composers. Always a groundbreaker, he was part of a disparate group, along with Steve Reich, LaMonte Young and Terry Riley, that advanced the notions of Minimalism in the 1960s. Glass developed his ideas directly because of his work in film, for in 1964 he collaborated with Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar on the soundtrack for an underground movie called Chapaqqua. Inspired by the Indian rhythmic practice of constantly changing time signatures, he created his basic style of increasingly complex repetitions and overlapping lines, a style best heard in his monument of Minimalism, Music in Twelve Parts. Moving into his post-Minimalist phase, in 1976 Glass teamed with maverick playwright Robert Wilson to create Einstein on the Beach, a mammoth work that reinvented opera. Since then he’s shown a facility in numerous modes of composing: he’s reworked into symphonies the landmark 1970s rock albums Heroes and Low by David Bowie and Brian Eno; he’s written dance music for Twyla Tharp (In the Upper Room); he’s created more genre-defying operas (The Voyage, Satyagraha, Akhnaten); he’s collaborated with a diverse list of artists, including Allen Ginsberg, Suzanne Vega, Kronos Quartet and Aphex Twin. Recently his interests in world music led him to work with Gambian kora master Foday Musa Suso, and the two performed their work The Screens at the Lobero Theatre on May 1, 2001.
The general public might best know Glass, however, for his film composing. Rather than simply providing music as an accompaniment to an otherwise finished film, Glass considers music an essential narrative force. Beginning with his influential work in 1983 with Godfrey Reggio on Koyaanisqatsi, Glass has worked with many directors not only to conceptualize a score from the film’s initial planning stages, but also to help edit the final film. “Glass’s music for Koyaanisqatsi has only gained in stature over the past 18 years,” insists The New York Times, “[The] score has countless thrilling moments sharply etched and consistently inspired...a masterpiece.”
Since 1983 he has written numerous scores for some of the leading filmmakers of our day—Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters for Paul Schrader, The Thin Blue Line for Errol Morris, his Oscar-nominated work for Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, The Truman Show for Peter Weir. Glass has also looked to the past, creating a chilling score for Tod Browning’s 1931 version of Dracula and composing a film-opera (live singers sing the dialogue) for Jean Cocteau’s luminous 1946 masterpiece La Belle et la Bête. “Philip Glass is an artist of tremendous sensitivity whose music works from the inside of the film, from its heart, to produce a powerful emotional intensity which remains for days in the listener’s head,” states Martin Scorsese. “For me the images in the film no longer stand on their own without Philip Glass’s music.”
The films in the Shorts program take a flexible approach to film technique and narrative, and invite Glass’s music to be an equal partner in the ultimate cinematic effect. Atom Egoyan’s “Diaspora” uses split-screens and color bleeding to create a fable about fear, herd-instincts and our sheep-like natures. Born in Egypt, the Armenian Egoyan now lives and works in Canada and has directed the critically acclaimed The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica and Felicia’s Journey. Peter Greenaway’s “The Man in the Bath” uses advanced digital-editing technology to create a lush meditation on bodies and water. Englishman Greenaway has long been an art house favorite, having directed The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Drowning by Numbers and The Draughtsman’s Contract. Shirin Neshat’s “Passage” hauntingly chronicles a desert funeral procession and burial. Born in Iran, Neshat lives and works in New York City, creating critically lauded film and video installations that have most recently won awards at the Kwangju Biennale in Korea and at the Venice Biennale. Michal Rovner’s “Notes” translates human forms into abstract, shifting musical notes. Born in Israel, Rovner currently lives in New York City, working in a wide range of mediums. This summer the Whitney Museum featured a mid-career exhibition of her work.
Godfrey Reggio, an inventor of a film style that creates poetic images of extraordinary emotional impact, is best known for his Qatsi trilogy (Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and the soon-to-be-released Naqoyqatsi), all scored by Philip Glass. “Anima Mundi,” created for the Worldwide Fund for Nature, celebrates the magnificence of the world’s fauna with wondrous close-ups and vistas of animals. “Evidence” looks back at children watching television, a damning portrait of the power of the media.
Philip Glass will take part in a Meet-the-Artist discussion prior to the performance at 7 pm in the Arlington Theatre. This event is open to ticket holders only.
Shorts is co-presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in association with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the UCSB Department of Film Studies. It is sponsored by Metropolitan Theatres Corporation, the Santa Barbara Independent and Borders.
Tickets are $35 and $25 for the general public and $20 for UCSB students.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535
or the Arlington Ticket Agency at (805) 963-4408
Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.