Philip Glass: DancePieces (1987) The Philip Glass Ensemble & Guests Michael Riesman, Conductor In the Upper

Room: Piano and synthesizers: Michael Riesman. Violins: Elliot Rosoff, Anahid Ajemian, Sanford Allen, Mayuki Fukuhara, Jill Jaf fe, Carol Pool. Violas: Harold Colleta, Jill Jaffe. Sol Greitzer. Cello: Fred Zlotkin. Bass: John Beal. Trumpets: William Rohdin, William Rueckenwald, Wilmer Wise. French horns: Joseph Anderer, Robert Carlisle, Sharon Moe. Trombones: Dennis Elliot, Alan Raph, Robert Smith. Flutes: Paul Dunkel, Jack Kripl. Clarinet: Jerry Kirkbride. Soprano saxophone: Jon Gibson. Tenor saxophone: Richard Peck. Percussion: Emu Lator. Voice: Dora Ohrenstein. Recorded and digitally mixed at The Living Room, Inc., N.Y., N.Y. Engineers: Don Christensen and Kurt Munkacsi. GlassPieces: Keyboards: Michael Riesman. Violas: Linda Moss, Lois Martin, Julian Barber, Al Brown, Maureen Gallagher. Cellos: Seymour Barab, John Abramowitz, Fred Zlotkin. French horns: Sharon Moe, Larry Wechsler. Flute & Piccolo: Jack Kripl. Drums: Don Christensen. Soprano saxophones: Jon Gibson, Richard Peck, Jack Kripl (Glasspiece #2). Tenor saxophone: Richard Peck. Voice: Dora Ohrenstein. Recorded and digitally mixed at Greene St. Recording Studio, N.Y., N.Y. Engineer: Kurt Munkacsi. -------------------------------------Glasspieces, with choreography by Jerome Robbins, was first performed by the New York City Ballet on May 12, 1983. The New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgo ff wrote: "When it opens, with thirty-six dancers in brightly colored practice c lothes crisscrossing the stage in carefully planned patterns all brilliantly set off against a graph-paper backcloth the effect is both rich and uncluttered." Gl ass's music often stops without warning, and Robbins's dances do the same. "Sudd enly," Tobi Tobias noted in New York, "as if there was a glitch in the city's he artbeat, all motion stops dead, and a second later the lights are quenched." "Rubric" and "Faades", the first two parts of Glasspieces, are the fifth and sixt h sections of Glass's first CBS recording, Glassworks. At the ballet they were p layed in Glass's revised version for full orchestra; they are heard here, as the y were on the earlier record, in their original scoring for the Philip Glass Ens emble. The third part was the first music ever heard in public from Glass's opera Akhna ten, which received its full premiere in Stuttgart almost exactly a year after t he first performance of the ballet. It's the opening scene of the Opera, and wit h a barbaric splendor never heard from Glass before depicts a solemn ceremony in ancient Egypt, the funeral of Pharaoh Akhnaten's father. The music, originally f or full orchestra, is heard here in the reduced but still chilling version that the Philip Glass Ensemble plays on its concert tours.

Gregory Sandow The collaboration of Philip Glass and Twyla Tharp also united two stars of conte mporary music and dance. Commissioned by Tharp for her newly structured company Twyla Tharp Dance, In the Upper Room premiered as an untitled work-in-progress o n July 7, 1986, at the Saratoga Arts Center Little Theater, where the audience's enthusiasm and subsequent reviews immediately hailed it as a new, dynamic creat ion. Divided into nine segments (five of which were chosen by Glass for this album), In the Upper Room features thirteen dancers, whose costumes evolve from black an d white to dominant red, in a variety of groupings and abstract styles (some on pointes, some in sneakers) that culminates in a dazzling finale for the entire e nsemble. Glass's music and Tharp's inventive juxtaposition of modern dance and more tradi tional ballet elements were praised by the Wall Street Journal reviewer Dale Har ris: "The Glass piece takes possession of our emotions, as it were, subliminally , through our growing awareness of its complex and harmonious structure. Though its subject, or content, is indescribable except in terms of the steps, rhythms and strategies for deploying space that the choreographer has devised for her wo nderful dancers, the expressive force of the work is so clear, so vividly commun icated, that the audience can hardly help but give it an ovation." Hailed by critics as a revelation, Richard Christiansen of the Chicago Tribune w rote of the work: "...A smashing reaffirmation of [Tharp's] genius and a thrilli ng extension of her vision of dance theater, challenging her dancers to exceed t hemselves in the speed and grace of their execution. A large part of the piece's impact comes from the grandeur of Philip Glass's electronic score, which invest s his repetitive rhythms with a rich new texture and strong melodic line..."