As part of the CKS Cultural Center's 20th anniversary celebrations, composer Philip Glass will play at the National Concert Hall, Taipei, on Wednesday and Thursday with The Philip Glass Ensemble. Hailed as a man that never stops working and one of the most innovative and influential composers of the latter part of the twentieth century, Glass and his band mates will perform a retrospective featuring some of his best-known work.
Movie scores feature prominently for both evenings with Golden Globe winning Raising the Sail from the movie The Truman Show, Mosque and Temple from Powaqqatsi and The Funeral from Akhnaten lined up for the first evening. The second evening will feature Sand Mandala from Kundun, the 1997 movie that won the LA Film Critics Association for Best Score, The Grid from the earlier Koyaanisqatsi and Dance Piece No. 9 from In the Upper Room.
The program of classical works for the first evening includes selections from Music in Similar Motion, Music in 12 Parts Parts 1 and 2, and Building from one of his best know works, Einstein on the Beach. The line-up of classical music for the second night includes Parts 7 and 8 from Music in 12 Parts, Facades from his 1983 album Glassworks and Dance No. 1 from Einstein on the Beach.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CKS CULTURAL CENTER
Not only has Glass created works for the screen, symphony and opera, he has teamed up with international theater virtuosos such as Robert Wilson to create the philosophical Einstein on the Beach.
The Philip Glass Ensemble was established by Glass in 1969 in New York and quickly gained a name for itself due to the combination of musical and visual elements in their performances. The ensemble of musicians for his Taipei performances includes Glass and Michael Riesman on keyboards, Jon Gibson, Andrew Sterman and Richard Peck on woodwinds, Frank Cassara and Mick Rossi on percussion and Lisa Bielawa on vocals and keyboard.
Though Glass' experimental compositions have brought him labels such as "avant-garde" and "minimalist," most of his music is surprisingly approachable and highly dramatic. He has collaborated with popular music performers such as David Bowie and Natalie Merchant and a staggering array of jazz musicians. Indeed, Glass' popularity can be partially attributed to his wide range of projects in different genres over a variety of media.
His current projects include Book of Longing, a work based on the poetry of Leonard Cohen and the musical score for the Woody Allen film Cassandra's Dream.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would