Naqoyqatsi (2001)

The 16-minute cenrepiece of the evening was a suite of four so-called Tissues- interludes, really- from Glass's score for Godfrey Reggio's 2002 film, Naqoyqatsi, a visual montage about globalised technology and violence. They were arrnaged for the evening's soloists. A tiny figure would glint from a celeste, be joined by the cello, and then mutate into more forms than could ever be thought imaginable. Or an elegiac cello song, born of an archetypal Glass arpeggio, would be turned to a mirage in the harmonic palette of the marimba and, ballasted by piano, become a type of variations on a ground bass.