On the shelf next to the photograph of Tibetan lama Galen Rinpoche, next to the framed Dalai Lama picture, next to the family photographs and statuettes of violins and goddesses, is a bevy of ceramic frog figurines, suspending a jet-black shirt with purple lettering. It reads: Well, while I’m here I’ll do the work- and what’s the work? to ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow. (from “Memory Gardens” –Allen Ginsberg) The makeshift shrine appears twice in Scott Hicks’s 119 minute-long documentary, “Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts,” and gives as apt a snapshot of Philip

by Patrick Durek Since its inception in 1985, Cygnus Ensemble has been at the forefront of chamber groups dedicated to expanding the repertory. Generating works for subsets of its unorthodox instrumentation—two guitars, cello, oboe, flute, and violin—has been its primary mission, and while premieres by well-known composers (Charles Wuorinen, Meyer Kupferman, and Milton Babbitt) have been given, it is the group’s championing of works by up-and-coming composers that has perhaps been most significant. Robert Martin, Jonathan Dawe, and Robert Pollock have all written multiple works for Cygnus Ensemble and are now firmly rooted in the Northeastern milieu that Wuorinen, Kupferman,

“But he, Siddhartha, where did he belong? Whose life would he share? Whose language would he speak?” These words of Hermann Hesse depict Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) at a pivotal point in his quest to find purpose in the world. He will soon find it, seeing one where he once saw many, finding that the seemingly unrelated are related. Later in the same book, Siddhartha, is a chapter called “By the River,” which inspired the title of Indian-American composer Asha Srinivasan’s newest work, By the River of Savathi, that will be premiered on June 2nd and 3rd, in New York City,