"Koyaanisqatsi Live" with the Philip Glass Ensemble

The Philip Glass Ensemble comprises the principal performers of the music of Philip Glass. Glass founded the ensemble in 1968 in New York City as a laboratory for his music. Its purpose was to develop a performance practice to meet the unprecedented technical and artistic demands of his compositions. In pioneering this approach, the group became a creative wellspring for Glass, and its members remain inimitable interpreters of his work.

The artists of the Philip Glass Ensemble recognize their unique position in the history of music of the past half-century, and passing on that legacy is part of their practice. A deep dedication to educating the next generation of musicians is integral to the ensemble’s work, both on tour and as the ensemble-in-residence at the Philip Glass Institute at the New School. 

The group debuted at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969 and in its early years performed primarily in the galleries, artist lofts, and museums of SoHo’s then-thriving artistic community. In the five decades since, the ensemble has performed in world-renowned music festivals and concert halls across five continents (including the Center for the Arts’ inaugural concert in 2013), and has made records with Sony, Nonesuch, and Orange Mountain Music.

Many of Philip Glass’s most celebrated works were expressly composed for the ensemble: its core concert pieces Music in Twelve Parts, Music in Similar Motion, and Music with Changing Parts; the opera and musical theatre projects Einstein on the Beach, Hydrogen Jukebox, 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, and Monsters of Grace; and the full-length dance works Dance (Lucinda Childs) and A Descent Into the Maelström (Australian Dance Theater). The group is most widely acclaimed for its soundtracks to Godfrey Reggio’s trilogy of wordless films: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi. It is also featured in Glass’ operas, La Belle et la Bête and The Photographer.

The Philip Glass Ensemble is the exclusive performer of its repertoire and is dedicated to bringing it to audiences worldwide.  

Through his operas, symphonies, compositions for his own ensemble, and wide-ranging collaborations with artists from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg and Leonard Cohen to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times. 

Glass has written music for experimental theatre and for Academy Award-winning motion pictures such as The Hours and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, while Koyaanisqatsi, his initial filmic landscape with Godfrey Reggio and the Philip Glass Ensemble, may be the most radical and influential mating of sound and vision since Fantasia.

His associations, both personal and professional, with leading rock, pop, and world music artists date back to the 1960s, including the beginning of his collaborative relationship with artist Robert Wilson. Glass has composed more than 25 operas, large and small; 14 symphonies; 13 concertos; soundtracks to films ranging from new scores for the stylized classics of Jean Cocteau to Errol Morris’s documentary about former defense secretary Robert McNamara; nine string quartets; and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others.

Indeed, Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multigenerational audience in the opera house, concert hall, dance world, film, and popular music — simultaneously.