BIOGRAPHY

Established by composer Philip Glass, the first performance by the Philip Glass Ensemble was held in May 1969 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, City. Embraced first by the visual art community working in Soho in the early 1970's, the early concerts performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble were considered visual as well as musical events and were often performed in art galleries, artist lofts, and museum spaces rather than traditional performing art centers.

Since that time, the members of the PGE have become known as the premiere performers of the music of Philip Glass and continue to be an inspiration for new work. Over the past thirty years, the group has performed on four continents in some of the most prestigious music festivals and concert venues throughout the world. They have been featured in Philip Glass' opera Einstein on the Beach as well as the music theater projects Hydrogen Jukebox; 1000 Airplanes on the Roof; The Photographer; La Belle et la Bête; and Monsters of Grace.

The Philip Glass Ensemble tours regularly with selections from Philip on Film, a festival of film score by Philip Glass played live in concert with screenings of the original films: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Naqoyqatsi, La Belle et La Bête, and Dracula.

In June 2004, in Athens, Greece, Glass premiered Orion, a new work for ensemble and world musicians commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad 2001-2004. Following its world premiere in Athens, Orion was performed in Greece, Italy, France, London, Australia, as well as cities in the United States.

- February 2006

PLEASE NOTE: Actual Ensemble configurations vary depending on the Philip Glass works being performed.

PHILIP GLASS
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Philip Glass is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Julliard School. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and while there, 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 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 12 Parts, followed by the landmark opera, Einstein on the Beach, created with Robert Wilson in 1976.

Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His score for Martin Scorsese's 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, along with winning a BAFTA in Film Music from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Original scores for the critically acclaimed films The Illusionist and Notes on a Scandal were released last year. Glass has received an Oscar nomination for his Notes score.

In 2004, Glass premiered the new work Orion- a collaboration between Glass and six other international artists opening in Athens as part of the cultural celebration of the 2004 Olympics in Greece and his Piano Concerto No. 2 (After Lewis and Clark) with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra. Glass' latest symphonies, Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 8, premiered in 2005 with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC and Bruckner Orchester Linz at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, respectively. 2005 also saw the premiere of Waiting for the Barbarians, an opera based on the book by J.M. Coetzee. Glass' orchestral tribute to Indian spiritual leader Sri Ramakrishna, The Passion of Ramakrishna, premiered in 2006 at Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Glass maintained a dense creative schedule throughout 2007, unveiling several highly anticipated works, including Book of Longing and an opera about the end of the Civil War titled Appomattox. In April 2007, the English National Opera, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Opera, remounted Glass' Satyagraha, which will appear in New York in April 2008. Woody Allen' s most recent film, Cassandra' s Dream, with an original score by Glass will premiere in January 2008.

MICHAEL RIESMAN (conductor, keyboards) is a composer, conductor, keyboardist, and record producer, and has been a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble since 1974. He has conducted recordings of a great number of Glass works including Einstein on the Beach (both recordings), Glassworks, The Photographer, Songs From Liquid Days, Dance Pieces, Music in 12 Parts (both recordings), and Passages, and almost every Glass film soundtrack including Koyaanisqatsi (both recordings), Mishima, Powaqqatsi, The Thin Blue Line, Anima Mundi, A Brief History of Time, Candyman, Kundun, The Truman Show, Naqoyqatsi, The Fog of War, Secret Window, Taking Lives, and Undertow. He was the pianist for the Academy-Award-nominated soundtrack for The Hours, and has also recorded a solo piano version of that score. He has received two Grammy nominations as conductor, for The Photographer and for Kundun. He has conducted and performed on albums by Paul Simon (Hearts and Bones), Scott Johnson (Patty Hearst), Mike Oldfield (Platinum), Ray Manzarek (Carmina Burana), David Bowie (BlackTie/White Noise), and Gavin Bryars (Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet). Mr. Riesman released an album, Formal Abandon, on the Rizzoli label, which originated from a commission by choreographer Lucinda Childs. His film scores include Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Pleasantville (1976), and Christian Blackwood's Signed: Lino Brocka. Mr. Riesman studied at Mannes College of Music and Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D., and has taught at Harvard and SUNY-Purchase. He was Composer in Residence at the Marlboro Music Festival and at the Tanglewood Festival, where he has conducted performances of his own works.

LISA BIELAWA (keyboards, soprano) specializes in both early music and contemporary music. A composer as well, she has appeared as vocalist in performances of her own works at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, the INFANT Festival in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, American Music Week in Sofia, Bulgaria, the Bang On A Can Festival in New York, and in the Hildegurls Electric Ordo Virtutum at the 1998 Lincoln Center Festival. Winner of the 2002 American Composers Orchestra Whitaker Commission and a recent recipient of the Aaron Copland Award for emerging composers, her 40-minute work The Right Weather for piano and orchestra was premiered by ACO at Carnegie Hall's new Zankel Hall in February 2004. As an early music advocate, she has toured and recorded as soprano with the Renaissance and early music group Pomerium. As a contemporary music vocalist she has appeared as soloist with the American Composers Orchestra, the Albany Symphony and the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. As the vocalist in the Philip Glass Ensemble since 1992, she has toured extensively throughout the world; recordings with Glass on the Nonesuch label include Einstein on the Beach and Music in Twelve Parts. She has also sung major roles in operas by Anthony Braxton and Michael Gordon, and has premiered and recorded works written for her by Aaron Jay Kernis, Michael Daugherty, Randy Woolf and Toby Twining.

DAN DRYDEN (live sound mix) has been a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble since 1983. He has mixed performances of PGE concerts, The Photographer, Einstein on the Beach (1984, 1993), Koyaanisqatsi (Live), Powaqqatsi (Live), La Belle et La Bête, Les Enfants Terribles and Hydrogen Jukebox. He has also worked with Lloyd Cole, Laurie Anderson, Ravi Shankar, the Raybeats and others. In the studio, he has recorded The Photographer, Satyagraha and Mishima as well as the works of other artists. Dan has been the driving force in the preservation of the visionary environment The Healing Machines created from 1954-1986 by the late artist/inventor Emery Blagdon in Nebraska.

STEPHEN ERB (onstage audio engineer) spans, and sometimes combines, the worlds between music and theatre. His work with the Philip Glass Ensemble includes the productions La Belle et la Bête, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Monsters of Grace, and the Philip on Film pieces including Anima Mundi. He has also served as audio engineer for such varied artists as Ella Fitzgerald, Henny Youngman, Burl Ives, and Leonard Rose. In the theatre world he is credited with Broadway productions such as Annie Get Your Gun, The Goodbye Girl and Jane Eyre. Off-Broadway includes Marvin's Room and Sight Unseen. Theatrical tours include Hello Dolly (with Carol Channing), Les Miserables, and proof. He spent six years as Sound Master at The La Jolla Playhouse working on such productions as Peter Sellers' Ajax and the Nat and Cannonball Adderly musical Shout Up A Morning. Stephen is honored to be working on the new live presentation of The Qatsi Trilogy and to have recently been asked to become a member of The Philip Glass Ensemble.

JON GIBSON (woodwinds) is a composer, multi-wind instrumentalist (saxophones, flutes, clarinets) and visual artist who has taken part in numerous landmark musical events over the past three and a half decades, performing in the early works of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, LaMonte Young and Philip Glass-- with whom he continues to perform in various configurations-- along with a host of other musicians, choreographers and artists including Merce Cunningham, Nancy Topf, Lucinda Childs, Tania Mouraud, JoAnne Akalaitis, Simone Forti, Thomas Buckner, Peter d'Agostino, Harold Budd, David Behrman, Elizabetta Vittoni and Moacir Santos. His own solo and ensemble music has been performed in many venues throughout the world. Recent projects and performances include collaborations with the Nina Winthrop Dance Company (Cumulus) and with dancer Elisabetta Vittoni (Incontro). His chamber opera, Violet Fire, about the inventor Nicola Tesla, was recently performed in Philadelphia (www.violetfireopera.com). Gibson is a graduate of San Francisco State University where he studied composition with Wayne Peterson and Henry Onderdonk and improvisation with saxophonist John Handy. Further information can be accessed at the websites: www.artabounds.com and www.jongibson.net

KURT MUNKACSI (sound design), president of Euphorbia Productions, has been on the leading edge of music for the past thirty years. His long time association with composer Philip Glass is well known. Mr. Munkacsi has produced all of Glass' commercial recordings. He also designed the sophisticated sound systems used for such Glass theatrical works as Einstein on the Beach, Koyaanisqatsi, La Belle et La Bête and Monsters of Grace. Euphorbia Productions is involved in all aspects of contemporary music - producing soundtracks for such noted directors as Martin Scorsese, Peter Weir, Errol Morris, Paul Schrader and Godfrey Reggio; a joint venture with Polygram International, Point Music; building a state of the art 48 track digital recording studio in New York City, Looking Glass Studios; and producing CD's for companies such as Sony Classical, Nonesuch Records, Elektra Entertainment, Virgin Records, Island Records, A&M Records and others. In 1998 the musical score he produced for Scorsese's Kundun, received Academy Award and Golden Globe Nominations for Best Original Score, and won the L.A. Film Critics award for Best Music/Score. In 2002 the score he produced for the The Hours was again nominated for an Academy Award.

MICK ROSSI (keyboards, percussion) is a pianist, percussionist, composer and conductor Mick Rossi is known for his work in the NY Downtown scene and beyond. He has performed and recorded with Alex Acuña, Steven Bernstein, Roger Daltry, Dave Douglas, Billy Drewes, Mark Dresser, Peter Erskine, Eric Friedlander, Philip Glass, Vinny Golia, Eddie Gomez, Hall and Oates, Gerry Hemingway, Andy Laster, Arif Mardin, Randy Newman, David Sanborn, Mike Sarin, Carly Simon, Wadada Leo Smith, Andrew Sterman, John Valentino, and Cuong Vu, among others. Performances include the NY, Knitting Factory, Fringe, Singapore, and Montreux jazz festivals, WNYC's New Sounds, NPR's All Things Considered, The American Dance Festival, The Metropolitan Opera, MATA, Ravenna Festival, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, American Ballet Theater, Lincoln Center, Les Nuits de Fourviere, Jay Leno, and David Letterman. Broadway credits include "The Who's Tommy," "Jekyll and Hyde," and "The Full Monty," among others. Recent films include "The Vagina Monologues" (HBO) and the recent hit "Standing In The Shadows Of Motown" (Artisan). New recordings include "They Have A Word For Everything" (Knitting Factory Works), "Nosferatu" (Dreambox), "Inside The Sphere" (Cadence), "New Math" (ToneScience), "Songs From The Broken Land" (OmniTone), and "One Block From Planet Earth" (OmniTone), his sixth recording as a soloist.

ANDREW STERMAN (woodwinds) is a flutist, saxophonist, clarinetist and composer, whom the New York Times praised for "Beautiful and sensitive playing", first appeared in some of the best big bands around; those of Buddy Rich, Louis Bellson, Gil Evans, Toshiko Akiyoshi, and many others. Always a fan of great jazz singers, while very young he played with many of the all time masters, including Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Joe Williams, Mel Torme and Aretha Franklin. Audiences have heard him with jazz masters including Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie, Fred Hersch, Rashied Ali, Wallace Roney, Roland Hanna, and Ron Carter. Sterman has been soloist with many New Music groups, including MATA, ISCM, Bang on a Can, Avian Orchestra, and the Eos Orchestra. Mr. Sterman tours and records extensively with the Philip Glass Ensemble, which he joined in 1991. He is featured on Glass's 2003 CD, Philip Glass: Saxophone. Mr. Sterman's new CD, Blue Canvas With Spiral, a set of intimate and original jazz pieces, is meeting critical acclaim: "A sound as pure as moonlight, a richness that turns into melodic romanticism…" Sterman has developed a deeply intuitive and effective teaching method integrating ancient breathing practices with modern woodwind techniques. He frequently gives master classes and workshops on this increasingly popular methodology, practiced by students, emerging musicians and established professionals alike. Visit www.andrewsterman.com.