The third in the Glass’ trilogy of operas about men who changed the world in which they lived through the power of their ideas, “Akhnaten”‘s subject is religion. The Pharaoh Akhnaten was the first monotheist in recorded story, and his substitution of a one-god religion for the multi-god worship in use when he came to power was responsible for his violent overthrow. The opera describes the rise, reign, and fall of Akhnaten in a series of tableaus. Libretto (Egyptian, Arcadian, Hebrew, and language of the audience) by the composer in association with Shalom Goldman, Robert Israel and Richard Riddell. Vocal text drawn from original sources by Shalom Goldman.

Orange Mountain Music presents this new limited edition 11 disc boxed set - The Symphonies by Philip Glass. This collection features conductor Dennis Russell Davies who has arranged the commission of nine of ten Glass symphonies, leading the orchestras over which he has presided during the past 15 years including the Bruckner Orchester Linz, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester Basel, and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. This collection is the fruit of a 20 year collaboration between Glass and Davies and showcases a wide variety within this surprising body of work by Glass.

This brilliantly devised CD from Gerard McChrystal is a deeply personal album; at times mystical, the music is always beautiful and captivating. Indeed 'Aria' has similar qualities to Jan Gabarek's 'Officium' (which sold 1.4 million copies) and will appeal to this fan-base. Featuring soprano and alto saxophone with a colourful array of different ensemble accompaniments — string orchestra, choir, guitar, piano, solo, string quartet and electronics. Baroque music blends seamlessly with contemporary; Handel resolves into Michael Nyman, Debussy's Syrinx morphs into Ravel's Piece en forme de habanera. All the tracks lead to the next by key or by starting and ending on the same note. Other works include Philip Glass Façades, Faure Les Berceaux, Bozza Aria, as well as original works by Billy Cowie, Karen Tanaka, Andy Scott and Michael McGlynn (from the vocal group Anúna who featured in Riverdance). Accompanying Gerard on this album are some of the UK's finest classical musicians including the Smith Quartet and the No. 1 best-selling classical artist, guitarist Craig Ogden. Gerard McChrystal is a multi-award winning saxophonist who has performed as a soloist in over 30 countries with many of the World's leading orchestras and ensembles.

In 1986 Mr. Glass was commissioned to create and bring a piece to the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Adelaide, Australia. He chose to write a piece based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story "A Descent into the Maelström" and invited collaborators dancer/choreographer Molissa Fenley, set designer Eamon D’Arcy and theatre director Mathew McGuire to participate. They transformed Edgar Allan Poe's vertiginous short story of being swept into a huge and terrible whirlpool by a raging hurricane that "the oldest seaman in Norway never experienced" into a Musical/Dance/Theatre extravganza. This compelling, propulsive piece of music premiered in March, 1986 at the Adelaide Festival of Arts and was only performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble during the week of the festival in Australia. Consequently, it has had very little exposure to Philip Glass' audience. This little known recording of this powerful piece of classic Glass music was made when the Philip Glass Ensemble was at one of its peaks. It was also done in possibly one of the best settings for Philip Glass and his musicians– musical theatre.

Simply MARI is the name of the Deutsche Grammophon debut of Norwegian violinist Mari Samuelsen. Recorded with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin under the baton of Jonathan Stockhammer, MARI's music reflects the contradictions of life in our time - the feeling of haste in everyday life, of being driven by constant communication, of being uprooted in a boundlessly mobile world, but MARI also refers to the longing for peace and quiet, for a place in nature to find oneself again.

American new-music sextet eighth blackbird, which won Grammy Awards for each of its last three Cedille Records albums, continues to connect with genre-spanning, cutting-edge composers on FILAMENT, a CD of world-premiere recordings of works by Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, and Son Lux, plus a Philip Glass classic. The ensemble’s album, FILAMENT, was produced by Dessner, a Brooklyn-based composer, guitarist, and member of the Grammy-nominated, Billboard-charting indie rock band The National. Premieres include Dessner’s Murder Ballades and Muhly’s Doublespeak, both written for eighth blackbird, and Son Lux’s To Love and This is my Line, a remix created from the album’s other tracks. Dessner, on guitar, and Muhly, on organ, join eighth blackbird for a live-in-concert recording of Glass’s mesmerizing Two Pages at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The album’s title, FILAMENT, is a metaphor for the fiber of friendship, collaboration, and mutual influence connecting the composers and performers on the album.

Of four living composers here, one is less well known. Like the Borusan Quartet itself, Hasan Uçarsu (born 1965) is Turkish. His String Quartet No 2 “The Untold” consists of two short, pensive outer movements – called epilogue and prologue – and two questing, energetic central movements full of Anatolian folk inspiration. Arvo Pärt’s Summa is a string version of a meditative vocal piece from 1977. Pēteris Vasks, like Pärt, found his own spiritual voice within or despite the restrictive Soviet aesthetic, as witnessed in his poignant String Quartet No 4. Philip Glass, in contrast, wrote his Quartet No 2, robustly minimalist, as stage music for an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s novel Company. A fascinating, engagingly played quartet of quartets.

The piano may not be the ideal medium for capturing the expressive possibilities of Glass' style of minimalism, but pianist Bruce Brubaker selects pieces that work well on the instrument. Part of the problem with hearing Glass on the piano is forgetting the sound of his ensemble, and the variety of colors (and volume) they have imparted to similar music. Brubaker begins his recital of works by Glass and Alvin Curran with his transcription of "Knee Play 4" from Einstein on the Beach. It is in fact a lovely piece on the piano if one can put the spectacular power and tonal range of the instrumental version out of one's mind. "Opening" from Glassworks, originally scored for piano, works beautifully on the instrument, and flows as naturally as the C major Prelude from Book I of The Well Tempered Clavier. The two pieces by Curran, Hope Street Tunnel Blues III and Inner Cities II, use a syntax similar to Glass, with a more dissonant tonal vocabulary. Hope Street Tunnel Blues III has ample kinetic energy that gives it an exhilarating momentum.

It’s often said that the distilled essence of composers can be heard in their string quartets. And so it is with Glass, whose quartets here show a craftsman of considerable invention. String Quartet No. 6 begins as a bustling burst of dense energy, its second movement beautifully meandering, rich, and complex. The single-movement String Quartet No. 7 is almost Beethovenian in its restless questioning. Arranged for string quartet (with two violas), the Saxophone Quartet is warmly scored and yet shows Glass at his most forensic, with each bar stunningly sculpted.

Attracted by a delightful fusion of early music sonorities with modern expressiveness, the three composers in this amazingly rich and varied programme build on the magnificent harpsichord concerto legacy of JS Bach. John Rutter’s beautiful Suite Antique is full of rich and haunting themes, with a significant solo flute part and a jazzy Waltz which is as much Brubeck as Bach. Philip Glass delivers an exciting experience of virtuoso instrumental blending and solo expressiveness, and with typical wit and elegance. Jean Françaix’s Concerto is terrific fun throughout.

Orange Mountain is proud to announce the release of the world premiere recording of LIFE - A Journey Through Time with The Hague Philharmonic under the direction of Carolyn Kuan. Commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and conceived of by nature photographer Frans Lanting, LIFE: A Journey Through Time is a multimedia experience with images by Lanting and music by Philip Glass that showcases the wonders of the natural world. The hour-long score is cast in seven movements and was drawn from previously existing music in the Glass catalogue from a variety of sources, orchestrated for the first time by Michael Riesman. Since its premiere in 2006, LIFE has been performed dozens of times including in an abbreviated version, ORIGINS, at the inauguration of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland for an audience of international dignitaries.

Itaipu (1989) is something of a cantata-cum-symphony-cum-oratorio with no clear text. Its topic is the world's largest hydroelectric dam, built on the Rarana River between Paraguay and Brazil, and the piece–in Glass's trademark punctuating minimalism–is filled with distinct South American instrumentation, particularly in the percussion. The music itself is noble, conjuring the human endeavor to build the five-mile-wide dam near the town of Itaipu. The Canyon (1988) is about no canyon in particular but tonally suggests the mystery of canyons in general. Both these compositions are among Glass's better works.

An imaginative mixture of the popular and the unusual. Barber’s only quartet has at its heart the famous Adagio for Strings: the latter is an arrangement of the second of the quartet’s two movements. That Adagio – which here benefits not only from the unfamiliarity of the chamber original but also from the Duke’s sensitively understated approach on their first recording for Collins Classics – is here surrounded by some captivating faster music (including a brief return to the opening Molto allegro’s ideas). And Robert Maycock’s excellent booklet notes hint at what those famous seven minutes of slow, sad passion in particular could really be said to be about: young homosexual love in the Austrian woods. Thirty years later, in 1966, another American in Europe, and still in his twenties, wrote his first string quartet, though it’s unlikely to be a direct reflection of love, this time in Paris.

Collection includes: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass, Nobuyuki Tsujii, Makoto Ozone, Nobuyuki Nakajima, Fazil Say, Takashi Kako, Michel Camilo & Moriya Saito.

Orange Mountain Music is proud to release the new album Aguas da Amazonia in a new orchestral version. In the 1990s Philip Glass composed a ballet for the Brazilian Grupo Corpo titled “Seven or Eight Pieces for a Ballet.” That music was picked up by the famous percussion group UAKTI and later recorded for the album Aguas da Amazonia. Aguas da Amazonia became the launching point and inspiration for arranger Charles Coleman who worked with conductor Kristjan Jarvi on adapting Glass’ music for large symphony orchestra. This new recording captures Coleman's orchestration in all its majesty showcasing the inherent symphonic possibilities.The performance showcases the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra under Kristjan Jarvi as well as the dynamic Absolute Ensemble.