The music for this performance was drawn from the composer Philip Glass’s first opera Einstein on the Beach, which he was developing in collaboration with the experimental theater director Robert Wilson in preparation for its world premiere at the Festival d’Avignon later that year. The work was performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble, which was comprised of seven musicians playing wind instruments, amplified keyboard (one of whom was Glass) and voice, alongside a fourteen-person chorus. The evening consisted of two concerts which focused on the musical elements of the work rather than its operatic structure. Einstein on the Beach went on to become the first work in Glass’s portrait opera trilogy (which also included Satyagraha and Akhnaten) that focused on significant men from history and received major critical acclaim.