Glass Notes

Glass' Inner Bach - Bloomberg News

Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) -- ``This piece can bring me the recognition that I'm actually part of an older tradition,'' Philip Glass said recently, perched on a sofa in his town house in New York's East Village. ``I've been associated with the downtown needle-stuck-in-the-groove school for a long time. We're about to break a new barrier -- the barrier of the classical-music world.

Freezing - Songs from the Liquid Days

Review - "Songs and Poems" -Buffalo news

from the Buffalo News
Philip Glass, Songs and Poems for Solo Cello performed by cellist Wendy Sutter and pianist Philip Glass (Orange Mountain Music); ... Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Jacqueline DuPre is gazing down fondly and perhaps even smirking a little. We seem to be in brilliant era for charismatic and accomplished young cellists. Here are three superb ones. The most startling one is the solo debut disc of cellist Wendy Sutter in the gorgeous and far-from-familiar solo cello music of Philip Glass, including the newly composed title piece on the disc. It is axiomatic that writing for a solo instrument maximizes his gift for line, elasticity and double stops and minimizes his reliance on propulsive minimalist burble. It’s a brilliant disc.

No Appomattox?

I went to the movies on Monday night at the best movie theater in New York City, the Pavilion at Prospect Park in Brooklyn.  It's one of those theaters which seems to be privately owned and operated. It's an old building and contains real plaster moldings and cool old light fixtures and the employees sport box ties, etc,.  It's not the usual flair you see at the cheapo movie houses at your local megaplex with their Styrofoam construction and neon lights.
Anyhow, during previews they advertised the San Francisco Opera's productions which are coming in March and April to Theaters Near You.  Conspicuous in its absence is our beloved Appomattox which was originally announced by the SFO in December as being part of the schedule. It doesn't appear on the poster either on the outside of the theater, no on the "Bigger Picture"''s website.  All this is leading me to believe that it's been cut, although there's no official word.  I was reminded of this upon seeing today's article in the SF Chronicle discussing the enterprise without mention of the Glass opera.

Musical Diplomacy?

My great admiration is sent to the New York Philharmonic and Glass Notes friend and NY Times critic Steve Smith. Both have traveled to North Korea for a concert of Dvorak, Gershwin and Wagner along with the Star Spangled Banner and the North Korean National Anthem with a promised encore of a beloved Korean folk song. 
For all the rhetoric, the magic of the whole trip is that the orchestra is there to play music, and there's nothing more to the story than that.  It takes great courage by many good people to attempt something like this, and for that, they all have my respect. 
Now if we could just convince the NY Phil to perform some PG...

Wiseguy: Philip Glass Uncut (Details Magazine)

           

Q: I understand that in your early days as a composer, you rented a Manhattan loft for 30 bucks.

A: It was down in the Fulton fish market. I paid $30 a month. My friends paid $25, and they thought that I had betrayed the community by allowing the rent to be pushed up that high. I was deeply apologetic for having destabilized the neighborhood.

Q: People romanticize that era, the early sixties.
A: And well they might! You could eat a hearty lunch for about 50 cents—you know, beans and a roll and a cup of coffee. To support that lifestyle, you had to work only two or three days a week. So it really was a time when coming to New York and being an artist was not that difficult.

Q: Is it true that you didn’t make a dime off music until you were 40?

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Lego and the Bete is up!

In its "complete version" (about 24 minutes) is now up on youtube.  Here's a shout-out to barkingbartok for all his work which I can only assume comes from a great affection for the opera.  So great.

2008 Opera Peformances

It's curious that with such hoopla surrounding composer-birth-years that 2008 looks to be a strong year performance-wise for Glass operas.  I recall 2006 as "Mozart 250" and how the whole exercise seemed interminable when one considers that there has never been a year where that composer's music wasn't celebrated.  Rare is it for a living composer to have as many operas being produced the world-round, and 2008 (a year after his 70th birth year), a non-birth year for Glass, is proving bountiful. 
In addition to his many dates performing (Book of Longing is solidly scheduled throughout the year), the world's opera house orchestras are practising their arpeggios in preparation for, as I count them at present, SIX different operas being performed by NINE different companies.
Tokyo Chamber Opera Theatre is performing "In the Penal Colony"; The Metropolitan Opera performs "Satyagraha"; Companies in Denmark, England and Germany perform "The Fall of the House of Usher"; The Erfurt Theater of Germany travels to London this summer to perform the captivating and politically charged "Waiting for the Barbarians"; Opera Theater of Pittsburgh travels to London's Covent Garden to perform "The Sound of a Voice"; and companies in Spain and Germany (Munich) perform "La Belle et La Bete." 
"Belle" is of particular interest to me because as with the Oakland Opera Theater's production, in Spain and Munich it is the Glass opera without the Philip Glass Ensemble and presumably without the Cocteau film.  I would love to see how it exists independent of those two entities.  I had the chance to see "Voice" at its premiere run at Harvard (already) years ago. In many ways that work is outside the norm for Glass with its orchestra of pipa, cello, flute, and percussion.   

Grammy No-Go/Paul Barnes

 Alas, another Grammy-less year.  Much to my chagrin Philip Glass remains unrecognized by the "Big Music" institution.

Paul Barnes, on a whirlwind tour celebrating the release of "The American Virtuoso" can be seen here in a series of videos in which he plays his transcriptions of Glass including the solo piano transcription of the Glass Piano Concerto No.2.  This guy is a serious pianist.

la Belle et la Bete

All I can say is wow.  I put in an inquiry as to whether the whole opera is going to be done.  We'll have to wait and see...