DVD Videos

Philip Glass' opera from 2009 explores the life of scientist Johannes Kepler though a series of dramatic scenes with two hours of Glass' music. It is filmed in HD and is sung in German and Latin with German/Latin subtitles as well as English. Kepler in many ways hearkens back to Glass' portrait operas of the early 1980s and continues the composers interest in scientists after having also written operas on Einstein and Galileo. The opera premiered at the Landestheater Linz in 2009 as part of Linz 09, the European Cultural Capital, and continues the amazing 30 year collaboration between Glass and the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, the music director of both the Landestheater Linz and its orchestra, the Bruckner Orchester Linz who has also recorded Glass' music extensively for the Orange Mountain Music label including Glass Symphonies 6, 7, and 8, and Glass' large scale opera The Voyage which was originally written for the Metropolitan Opera. Kepler is a refreshing return to large scale symphonic writing for the opera house. Recent Glass operas including Waiting for the Barbarians and Appomattox carry more dialogue and intimate narrative scenes whereas Kepler is a musical dedication to the life of this great scientists - triumphs and human flaws. As Glass states: "Kepler was a man with his mind in the clouds and his feet in the mud." This Orange Mountain Music recording was made in 2010 from live performances during its extensive run in Linz, and is the world premiere recording. Kepler is sung in German and Latin.

The opera was filmed by Austrian Broadcasting in 2009 and broadcast on Austrian and German television in 2010.

10 years in the making, 2 films by Evans Chan trace the artist's life, career and pianism. Strumming the strings of a grand piano like a harp and performing Beethoven on toy piano are among the surprising scenes in Sorceress of the New Piano (2004), which celebrates the trans-cultural career of Singapore-born, New York-based pianist Margaret Leng Tan, hailed by The New Yorker as "the diva of avant-garde pianism".

The film traces Tan's quest for a new pianistic language, performing ground-breaking works by masters Henry Cowell, George Crumb and her longtime mentor John Cage, as well as by maverick composers of the next generation.

Featured performers and critics include Joan LaBarbara, Edward Rothstein (New York Times), Mark Swed (Los Angeles Times), and Joshua Kosman (San Francisco Chronicle) share their thoughts on Tan's artistry and musical lineage.

Incorporating 1944 footage of Merce Cunningham's dance, Jasper Johns' art and a Marcel Duchamp film; Sorceress also highlights Tan's latest transformation as the champion of new repertoire for the toy piano.

BONUS FILM:The Maverick Piano (2007)

The Maverick Piano is an excursion into the sonic world of the avant-garde piano, as Margaret Leng Tan gives complete performances of 6 works by Cage, Satie, Ge Gan-ru and Toby Twining

The film represents the grand piano in various transformations: as a conventional keyboard (Cage: In a Landscape); prepared piano, also played with fists/forearms (Cage: In the Name of the Holocaust); as a stringed instrument, both plucked and bowed, juxtaposed with images of Cage's artwork (Cage: Music for Piano No. 2); strummed while played from the crook of the piano (Ge Gan-ru: Pipa/Ancient Music); in combination with toy piano (Twining: Satie Blues, Gymnopédie No. 3 arr. Margaret Leng Tan, in collaboration with Great Small Works)

In July 2002, Conny Janssen Danst and Cello Octet Conjunto Ibérico presented the performance Vuil&Glass at the invitation of summerfestival Karavaan. In the spectacular drive-in area of the Household Refuse Centre N-H in Alkmaar, Conny Janssen places the fragile bodies of the dancers in an enormous space, which is dominated by technology. The immense concrete plain of the impressive hall conveys the sound of the eight Conjunto Ibérico cellos. Together they form Waste&Glass. The emotions that are evoked by dance and music contrast sharply with the remote bareness of the ultramodern centre. The dimensions of this industrial bastion are not in proportion to the intimacy of the dancing human being and the string music. In this setting Conny Janssen, together with the dancers and the cellists, searches for enchantment and amazement.

The music is by the American composer Philip Glass who gave conductor Elias Arizcuren and Conjunto Ibérico “carte blanche” to compile a “musical guide” that covers the most representative aspects of his works.

Conny Janssen Danst and Cello Octet Conjunto Ibérico have worked together before. The successfull performance Vijzel in 1997, for which Conny Janssen was awarded the Philip Morris Kunstprijs Dans (Philip Morris Art Award Dance) in 1998, was also a co-production with Cello Octet Conjunto Ibérico.

PAL 4:3

Surround 5.0

PCM Stereo

Feature length 77 Min.

This documentary captures the overflowing energy and activity of one of today’s greatest composers, Philip Glass, and allows us to follow him from New York to London and from Paris to Boston. He speaks about his beginnings, his moving to Paris for two years of intensive study with Nadia Boulanger, his meeting with Indian musician Ravi Shankar and director Robert Wilson, who had a deep influence on his career. The film also shows him at work on the last details of his opera The Sound of a Voice, directed by Robert Woodruff and conducted by Alan Johnson. Eric Darmon’s camera, with its poetic shots and original framings, takes us for a musical journey into seven months of the life of the composer who, rising from the underground scene of the seventies, brought on a revolution in modern theatre.