In New York City, the New School’s College of Performing Arts has just launched the Philip Glass Institute, with Lisa Bielawa, a longtime member of the Philip Glass Ensemble, as composer-in-residence and chief curator. The idea for the institute originated with Glass and Bielawa, and Richard Kessler, executive dean of the New School’s College of Performing Arts, said he could think of “no better home for the Philip Glass Institute than the New School, which has been a home to John Cage, Henry Cowell, Martha Graham, Aaron Copland, the Fluxus Movement, and scores of trailblazing artists and scholars.” The institute’s first event in January featured a performance by the Philip Glass Ensemble and a discussion with Glass, Bielawa, and Kessler. In April, Bielawa conducted the Mannes String Orchestra in Glass’s Symphony No. 3, her own The Trojan Women, plus world premieres of string-orchestra versions of arias from Bielawa’s online opera Vireo, sung by Rowen Sabala; Jon Gibson’s Chorales for Relative Calm; and David T. Little’s 1986. At the Glass Institute, Bielawa is composing new works, curating concerts, and designing courses for students in the college’s Mannes School of Music, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and School of Drama.
