American composer Philip Glass has had a major influence on contemporary culture through his operas, symphonies, solo and chamber works, and electronic compositions for his own ensemble. He has also had fruitful collaborations with pop, rock, and world music artists, and across genres with writers, dancers, actors, and filmmakers. His operas, including Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten, enjoy enduring popularity and are performed in the world's greatest opera houses.
Glass has composed scores for Oscar-winning films like The Hours and Martin Scorsese's Kundun. His most influential work in the medium of film is, doubtless, the trance-like score to Koyaanisqatsi. Glass's symphonies are fourteen in number, and all convey the same mystical quality. In this concert, Ross Jamie Collins conducts Glass's Eighth Symphony, composed in 2005 and commissioned by the Brucker Orchestra in Linz, under the direction of Dennis Russell Davis. Davis encouraged the composer to "view the orchestra as a collective of virtuosic soloists, like those for whom concertos were written". But, as the composer himself has said, the subject matter is "the language of music itself".
