The Philip Glass Ensemble to Perform 'Naqoyqatsiat' at The Town Hall

The Town Hall will present a live performance of Philip Glass’s score with Godfrey Reggio's Naqoyqatsi featuring The Philip Glass Ensemble conducted by music director Michael Riesman, to a full screening of the third and final installment of the Qatsi film trilogy, Saturday, April 19, at 8:00 p.m.

The program follows performances at The Town Hall of Glass’s scores for Koyaanisqatsi (on November 29th, 2023) and Powaqqatsi (on December, 3rd 2024) accompanying screenings of the film. The live score to Naqoyqatsi will be another signature event in the relationship between Glass, the Ensemble, and The Town Hall, which goes back to 1974 when Glass rented the venue to premiere his early masterwork Music in Twelve Parts.

Like the previous films, Naqoyqatsi is a non-linear documentary without narration, characters, or dialogue, built around images and sound. It incorporates early digital animation and computer graphics, which gives it a distinct visual identity. The title, Naqoyqatsi, is a Hopi neologism that translates as "life as war," "civilized violence," or "a life of killing each other."

As it explores society’s transition from the “natural environments” featured in the previous films to a technology-based environment, Naqoyqatsi reflects on how digital technologies have profoundly changed our experience of the world and each other — often in ways we don’t perceive. 

Released in October of 2002, Naqoyqatsi, is the darkest film in the trilogy. “Although Naqoyqatsi has been some 10 years in the making, it takes on an especially somber coloration after 9/11,” wrote the late film critic Roger Ebert. “[…] war is now our way of life.” Not surprisingly, still traumatized by the news, audiences were not ready for such a message — and it had an impact at the box office.

Naqoyqatsi has no script, but Reggio has noted that it is structured in three movements, like a symphony, with different themes: human relations mediated by technology; competition, fame, and money as prime values; and a post-language world descending into war and civilized violence.

Glass’s score, featuring a cello as a recurrent leading voice, winds, keyboards, percussion, and voice of The Philip Glass Ensemble, is the more traditional and lyrical of the trilogy. It plays like a counterpoint to the reflections suggested by the visuals.

“Naqoyqatsi is the least often performed of the Qatsi Trilogy,” observes Sterman. “Koyaanisqatsi has long been respected and loved as a masterpiece of music and film. Powaqqatsi has been performed less often, and Naqoyqatsi has been performed even less often.” Naqoyqatsi has not been performed in New York City since 2005.

Michael Riesman, a keyboardist in the Philip Glass Ensemble since 1974, musical director since 1976, and the Ensemble’s arranger, notes that for the Town Hall concert, the Ensemble will expand to include cellist Matt Haimovitz, extra keyboard players, and two percussionists “using real percussion instruments, but also samples taken from the original recording played from pads.”

Photo credit: Ryuhei Shindo