Philip Glass at 75: Koyaanisqatsi

Barbican Hall, London
Barbican, Silk Street, London EC2
United Kingdom
020 7638 8891
http://www.barbican.org.uk/eticketing

Godfrey Reggio director

Britten Sinfonia
Philip Glass Ensemble
Trinity Laban Chamber Choir
Stephen Jackson choir director
Michael Reisman conductor

A live screening of Koyaanisqatsi the unforgettable 1982 film set to a new arrangement of Glass’ film score for his ensemble and orchestra.

Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 time-lapse cinematic vision of American cities and landscapes Koyaanisqatsi has been described as a ‘visual tone poem.’ In this wordless vision of nature and civilization is Reggio’s view of an ‘unbalanced world’, the collision of man with technology and the inadequate, humiliated state of language. As iconic as Reggio’s film is Glass’s score – momentous in its gradations of tempi, its seismically shifting harmonies and its seminal pitting of synthesized sounds against the weight of the orchestra. Here the Britten Sinfonia and the Philip Glass ensemble play the composer’s revised orchestration as a live accompaniment to the film.

Philip Glass : Koyaanisqatsi