A Descent Into the Maelstrom

On this CD:

1. The Mouse Singer, for piccolo & string quartet
Composed by Andrew Stiller
Performed by Orchestra 2001

2. A Periodic Table of the Elements
Composed by Andrew Stiller
Performed by Orchestra 2001

3. A Descent into the Maelstrom, for percussion
Composed by Andrew Stiller

4. Sonata a 3 Pulsatoribus, with Gargoyle
Composed by Andrew Stiller

5. The Water Is Wide, Daisy Bell
Composed by Andrew Stiller
Performed by Orchestra 2001

Tracks:

Another Look at Harmony
Piano Etude No.2
Saxophone Concerto
Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
Etude No.1
Houston Skyline
Dance from Act II, Scene III of Akhnaten
Etude No.5
Channels and Winds
Why Are We Here?
Thin Blue Line
Saxophone Concerto
2nd Perception of Light, Moon, Mist and Rainbow

Album Description

It has been said that Philip Glass is the `Godfather of Trance' and evidence of that is found in the remixes that a number of young producers/musicians began sending to Orange Mountain Music as early as 2002. These unsolicitated mixes became the genesis for Glasscuts, Philip Glass Remixed (release date Sept 2005). This CD presents a very diverse program without any one dominant style. The artists are Androoval from Uruguay, Robert Bell from Australia, Brian Bender from the US, Hector Castillo from Venezuela, Taylor Dupree from the US, Sebastian Escofet from Argentina, impLOG, from the US, Woody McBride DJ ESP from the US, Marcos Romero from Uruguay, Kate Simko from the US, Dietrich Schoenemann from the US, Luciano Supervielle from Uruguay and Dave Wesley from the US.

We invite you to immerse yourself in Glasscuts, Philip Glass Remixed with open ears to experience a Glass that is reminiscent of the past, but with an adventurous contemporary twist.

Customer Reviews:

This is just awful - I was suckered by the excellence Reich Remixed.......2006-07-23

I just assumed that this would be as equally wonderful, and that Glass' music would be even more translatable into the "trance" genre, or whatever the kids are calling it nowadays.

Sadly, it seems that this was done by junior high kids with a computer and Acid Foundry or whatever that cheap software is.

No creativity, and, oddly enough, not even any real sense of Glass' music still being in the "remix".

I am a huge fan of Glass; I am not a fan of this kind of music, but since I am also a fan of Reich and since, to my total surprise, I am quite enthralled by the Reich Remixed CD, I figured I really needed to give this CD a shot.

What a waste. This is totally amateur, but without the occasional genius that some amateur can manage. Strictly, totally, and banal amateur yuckiness.

a huge letdown..........2005-12-21

Yeah, it's fun and easy to beat up on remix albums since there are so many mediocre and terrible ones out there... but, wait: here's a great idea... let's give the pioneering, repetitive, trance-like minimalist music of Philip Glass the remix treatment... after all, Reich: Remixed was fabulous... surely the same kind of creativity can be unleashed in this project... But alas, something went terribly wrong here... these are mostly unbearably monotonous, grating, overlong, amateurish productions by remixers who don't seem to even GET (or enjoy?) Glass' music. A real missed opportunity and a huge letdown... ick...

The Ever Recyclable Glass .......2005-11-20

This is just another insipid release from the Orange Mountain label, which keeps putting out anything with the Philip Glass
name on it - even if it is flagrant garbage. Several releases have been issued which about 90% have the same old songs, just performed by different people. In fact, Philip Glass has become more banal and bovine in the last few years because he knows anything with his name on it will sell to the trendy modernistic music crowd. Overall, I believe it is time to stop
recycling Glass.

Pop music with only a hint of Philip Glass.......2005-10-28

This music should be categorized under the "popular music" category, not "classical". All the pieces have an incessant drum beat typical of popular music. This is unlike any other Philip Glass CD that I have and I have about a dozen of them. Where can I get rid of this?

Sound Effects.......2005-09-24

When this album was announced, I was quite looking forward to it; before hearing anything, I compared it to the wonderful work done on "Reich Remixed" which takes some daring approaches to Reich's music and does an excellent job (with a few exceptions) of being new and exciting. Unfortunately, Glass Remixed isn't as daring or as good.

Much of the music is overshadowed with Glass's music and themes. It's as if someone was playing the original music in the background and sound effects were added to it. Throughout listening to Remixed, these sound effects got in the way of the music and I ended up digging out the original pieces and listening to them. However, there are some excellent pieces of interpretation contained within: Etude #2, the Tirol Concerto, and the Saxophone Concerto stand out (especially the Saxophone Concerto since I don't care for the original piece).

The other mark against this effort is all the work had to come from the Orange Mountain Music catalog due to ownership complications. This is not to say there aren't outstanding pieces in the catalog, but this restriction limits most of Glass's seminal works from being considered.

As a huge Glass fan, I was mildly disappointed, but I applaud the effort and the concept behind it.

Philip Glass : A Descent into the Maelstrom

Average customer rating:

Not like Candyman.....
Realmente pobre
Slack tide
upwards or downwards or upwards or downwards spiral?
insipid

Philip Glass : A Descent into the Maelstrom
Glass , and Philip Glass Ensemble
Manufacturer: Orange Mountain
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Similar Items:

Philip Glass : Orion
Philip Glass : The OrphÃ©e Suite for Piano
Philip Glass : Symphony No. 8
Philip Glass : Early Voice
Philip Glass : The Voyage: An Opera in Three Acts

ASIN: B00006CTD5
Release Date: 2002-07-19

Tracks:

Vertigo
He is Coerced to Look
Engagement
The Naming
Tranquility
The Beggin
The Strategem
On My Watch and Caught
The Hurricane and Recognition of Death
The Entrance of the Moon
The Sighting
They Enter the Stream
Abandonment
The Brother Becomes a Maniac
The First Mad Rush
Second Perception of Light, Moon, Mist, and Rainbow
The Maelstr
Hour of the Slack and Escape

Album Description

In continuing with their ongoing program of releasing vital recordings from the archive of Philip Glass recorded material, Orange Mountain Music is pleased to release "A Descent into the Maelström". In 1986 Mr. Glass was commissioned to create and bring a piece to the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Adelaide, Australia. He chose to write a piece based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story "A Descent into the Maelström" and invited collaborators dancer/choreographer Molissa Fenley, set designer Eamon D'Arcy and theatre director Mathew McGuire to participate. They transformed Edgar Allan Poe's vertiginous short story of being swept into a huge and terrible whirlpool by a raging hurricane that "the oldest seaman in Norway never experienced" into a Musical/Dance/Theatre extravganza.

This compelling, propulsive piece of music premiered in March, 1986 at the Adelaide Festival of Arts and was only performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble during the week of the festival in Australia. Consequently, it has had very little exposure to Philip Glass' audience. In the spring of 1986 after the Ensemble returned to New York it was discovered that the 24 track live recordings that were made of the performances were distorted, noisy and mostly unusable. At that point PGE musical director, Michael Riesman, Kurt Munkacsi and the Ensemble members set about replacing their parts on the recording. The newly recorded tracks had to be kept in sync with the live recording because the resulting mix would be used for a television broadcast of the performances. The finished recording is a studio/live hybrid. It is very similar to the mix that was made in 1986 for the video, but we've remixed the material taking advantage of the digital recording technology that is available today! .

This little known recording of this powerful piece of classic Glass music was made when the Philip Glass Ensemble was at one of its peaks. It was also done in possibly one of the best settings for Philip Glass and his musicians- musical theatre. It will be available for shipping July 19th, 2002

Album Description

2002 release from Orange Mountain Music, a new record company created to serve the fans, aficionados & academics studying the music of Philip Glass. The idea for this label developed out of a project undertaken by Kurt Munkacsi, (producer of most of PG's recordings & head of Euphorbia productions) & Don Christensen to archive all the master recordings that Philip Glass has made. Over the last 30 some years Philip has produced hundreds of hours of recordings in the process of creating operas, film scores, musical theatre pieces & records. Glass has also recorded many performances of his solo, operatic, orchestral & small ensemble work. In the process of archiving all of these master recordings the label discovered a wealth of beautiful & unusual recordings & some very inspired performances, which they plan to bring to the public. 18 tracks.

Customer Reviews:

Not like Candyman............2007-01-01

My favorite is Candyman 1 and 2. This was made before those I believe, It is a bit like the Candy Man Scores, But doesn't have that touch of Power, that I yearn for in Music. But Worth the Money.

Realmente pobre.......2006-12-12

Para la profundida y desarrollo de cada trabajo que ha alcanzado un compositor como Philip Glass, considero que este trabajo esta por debajo de su nivel.

Si tuviera que catalogarlo en una sola palabra, podría definirlo como "insipido". No se termina de entender que quiere hacer el compositor con esta obra, ni que quiere dar a significar. Pudiera entonces hablarse de que logró captar muy bien lo que siginifica un "Maelström", pero a mi parece ni eso me queda claro.

Slack tide.......2005-11-30

Clearly there are people who love this music; I'm happy for them, but I do not number myself among them. I'm astonished at some of what I've read here--"this is completely different from other Glass works", etc. I don't see it, and I'm a composer--no armchair critic. The rhythmic patterns Glass uses here are identical to those he's used elsewhere--only here there are fewer of them. The arpeggiations and harmonies much like those in any Glass composition; the "melodic" (by which is meant 'conjunct' as opposed to arpeggiated) lines are the same--three ascending steps, rarely reversed. I agree with the reviewer who mourned the bad synthesizer sounds--the opening octaves put me in mind of "Funky Town" and it's inappropriately humorous every time it returns. I disagree with the fan who hopes for an updated version for live instruments and organ--this isn't great Glass by a long shot, and it's not worth reviving. Granted, there's a lot of kinetic energy here--loads of fast notes very loud--and that has a certain attractive quality to some listeners. Myself, I'd like to be able to tell the difference between, oh, a whirlpool and frenetic city life out of balance. Only in the very end does Glass do anything I haven't heard from him in other works.

Edgar Allan Poe's story is an attractive one, and I'd like to see this as a dance production where I imagine Glass's music works well. The photos on the CD, from the original production presumably, look quite interesting with the brother with the albatross around his neck, and Death yielding a sickle menacingly. But as a piece of music, I'm unimpressed, and it's not that I hate minimalism--I love much of John Adams' music, think In C and Different Trains and Come Out are hugely interesting and important pieces, and enjoy Tehillim and even Einstein on the Beach. But offshore, where the Maelstrom reigns, I think Glass has hit some slack tide.

If you are interested in Minimalism and haven't yet read it, do be sure to look up Tom Johnson's article What Is Minimalism Really About? It's a superb and very telling short article, a must read.

upwards or downwards or upwards or downwards spiral?.......2003-05-13

Well, true it is that I do not hold "Maelstrom" for PGlass's best work. In my ear it only manifests one or two musical ideas ('themes' I believe one calls them, if that can be applied to PG); which would be fine ('music with one or two changes'!), but for the use of synthesizers!! I hate synthesizers here!
I'm completely crazy about scores with plain electric organ ("Two pages" etc.) and with organ + orchestra ("Music with changing parts", "Einstein", "Akhnaten" etc.); but here, you get only some wind instruments and four synthesizers. These are fine for New or Cold Wave pop; but they sound so [inferior] in more complex compositions!
There are breathtaking accelerations of the score on "Maelstrom"; but all other moments seem to flop because they lack concrete sound matter, I mean those intertwining patterns of sheer sound which are so caracteristic of PGlass's mastery. Synthesizers (in the mid-80s) could never compete with the harmonic richness of conventional instruments. The same limitation shows on "1000 Airplanes".
Otherwise the record is perfectly clean, neat production from the Glass - Riesman - Munkacsi team. So 4 stars because I'm a PGlass fanatic!!
Yet could we dream of a organ + traditional ensemble version of the "Maelstrom"?

insipid.......2003-03-25

Philip Glass didn't create anything new with this cd. He's not one of the most famous living composers because he's one of the greatest -- I guess just because he's one of the most accessible amidst all the brilliant creative innovation of the 20th & 21st centuries (which he did play an important role in, granted, 30 years ago). This cd is so boring to me. The swirling effect of arpeggiation is appropriate to the theme, & Mr Glass probably thought he was being so superbly minimalistic by isolating just that as the compositional element for almost all the music, but it sounds like it could have been made in as long as the cd lasts by absent-mindedly holding down a few keys on a keyboard with the arpeggiation button on. I think this is probably not music for one with an ear for composition. If you do like it, don't worry about me.

Average customer rating:

A Descent Into the Maelstrom

Manufacturer: Master Musicians Col
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Percussion | Instruments | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000004AFZ
Release Date: 1995-12-13

Tracks:

The Mouse Singer - Orch 2001
A Periodic Table Of The Elements - Orchestra 2001
A Descent Into The Maelstrom - Maelstrom Percussion Ens
Son A3 Pulsatoribus, With Gargoyle And A Moral In Kesh - Maelstrom Percussion Ens
The Water Is Wide, Daisy Bell - James Freeman