Philip Glass: Classic or Dud? Search and Destroy

some scattered thoughts i posted on facebook late last night...

"Einstein On The Beach" = a life-changing experience. I'd heard the music but never saw it staged before tonight. It's exhilarating and delirium-inducing, a total sensory overload while at the same time being quite meditative. It works both as surface-level absurdism and as a survey of 20th century art forms, from the Bolshoi ballet to Dada and Futurism and sound poetry to mid-century experimental theater and Warhol's marathon-viewing "Empire" to jazz to minimalist contemporaries like Terry Riley and Charlemagne Palestine. Andre and I both sat through all 4-plus hours without getting up to use the bathroom or stretch our legs.

Someone over on ILM said it's about *endurance*, which works not only in the sense of the audience's threshold for sitting still and shutting up, and not only in the sense of the performers' intense stamina/dedication/concentration, but in a very American, Horatio Alger bootstrappy way. The American myth with the European sensibilities splashing up against it from the shores of said "beach."

The audience was terrible -- a lot of walkouts, a lot of talking and coughing. Those who made it to the end were really appreciative, though.

i was in the back with the cheapskates, who were a combination of hipsters like me and older suburbanites who probably didn't know what they were getting into.

Terrible cell phone pic but this was my vantage point:

http://31.media.tumblr.com/ab672da42200cfdc0918585daed61088/tumblr_mumf1iFMhh1qjuy9xo1_500.jpg

Could we get the wind for the sailboat

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what it's ABOUT is endurance - an audience member staying put for like four solid hours, cast members having to sing these eternal repetitions and doing these insanely meticulous choreographed routines (THE FIELD SEGMENTS!!!!), that kind of stuff.

And doesn't it create a bridge of empathy between performers and audience? Like, the dancers are doing an endless number of coupes jetes en tournant, so many that I started thinking they were doing it for me, which cuts through a lot of aesthetic expectations and gets to some more emotionally primal place.

James, which aria are you talking about, i.e. when does it happen? "Night Train"?

It's the one after Bed 2, performed by the lady who keeps picking up the conch shell.

And doesn't it create a bridge of empathy between performers and audience? Like, the dancers are doing an endless number of coupes jetes en tournant, so many that I started thinking they were doing it for me, which cuts through a lot of aesthetic expectations and gets to some more emotionally primal place.

Oh god it totally engaged the shit out of me; the dance sequences reminded me of NASCAR races since the slightest error in judgment would have resulted in everyone crashing into each other. OTOH when it's a mass scene with lots of different action going on I just get absorbed by digging up the intricacy of the choreography and end up missing something happening elsewhere on the stage (Train 1 is my favorite example; I'd be watching the one lady march back and forth across the stage and then all of a sudden, a paper airplane). I dunno if that necessarily qualifies as empathy but it sure was fun as hell to watch. Reminded me a lot of Playtime.

was floored by this at the BAM. Grew up listening to this and other glass (much more than I do these days), and the Field Dances were the two things I could never have imagined or anticipated from the scores and stage directions and clips I'd seen in the past. Coming after the oppressiveness of certain other very deliberate sections there was just this massive, overwhelming euphoria when they arrived. "Wonder" I guess is the word.

disagree about "endurance" btw. Its more about maybe prolonged meditation and insight, or the process of thought. You think about simple things slowly, carefully, paring away the inessential, and eventually an enormous complex pattern pops into focus.

seconding get bent's comments - i'm still picking up pieces of my brain off the floor from seeing this last night

unfortunately she was also right about the audience although i guess i can't blame ppl for getting squirmy during a 4.5-hour opera with no actual intermission (i used the bathroom during the beginning of the 2nd trial scene and passed an older woman complaining about how 'monotonous' it was)

i don't even know where to begin talking about what i loved about it. the field dances (i felt like they were happening in slow motion, total heart-stopping moment), the knee plays (esp. the fourth(?) one where they're writhing on the glass gurneys), the entire night train scene, the tableau vivant of all of the performers in the building scene, the sheer intensity and concentration in the violinist's performance, all those bits of absurdist humor strewn throughout (the chorus making tooth-brushing gestures, etc) - just, gah!

using actual toothbrushes too!

ahh, couldn't tell from my vantage point

maybe not so much endurance as 'dedication', 'singlemindedness', 'craft', 'obsession' and also, conversely, transcendence.

normally i find these theme's of glass' too spiritual, infused with lots of silly mysticism. but here i see them as relating to, on some level, the scientific process.

Music in Twelve Parts this weekend in London, can't wait!

Yep. Saw it in the Czech Republic this summer, an amazing experience.

P. Glass is in the ensemble too, hope he can keep going for 4 hours

He's certainly looking a bit frail these days it's true. Seemed to manage OK the time I saw it though.

should I go see Satyagraha y/n

Beautiful music + giant puppets == yes! (Nb. I have not seen the opera.)

Saw it, was good. Still in atp recovery mode so my attention kinda wandered in places but it was p damn gorgeous. And I'm usually way more of a Reich guy by disposition but this & Einstein have really impressed me in performance. Kinda h8 the whole going to the opera experience tho

I was impressed that a musical about emancipation could ironically create an enslaved state for performers and audience members.

Four nights of Einstein in Berlin announced:

http://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/de/aktuell/festivals/einzelveranstaltungen/einzel_programm/einzel_veranstaltungsdetail_84630.php

That's interesting, judging by their website I had assumed that the tour was winding down, it's in Paris in Jan too. I am so tempted.

'einstein on the beach' live-streaming from paris RIGHT NOW

http://culturebox.francetvinfo.fr/einstein-on-the-beach-au-theatre-du-chatelet-146813

Watching it but hope someone is capturing it so I can watch it at my leisure later. So good.

Holy crap!!

bizarre to watch it with quick cuts & close-ups. initially seems to go against the grain of the whole experience but the longer you watch, the deeper it sinks

hope this comes out

Oh I hope so

All I could find is a documentary - http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/preserving-a-legacy-einstein-on-the-beach

*phew*

Q - Will "Einstein" live on without you and Bob?

A - Part of the idea was to set a performance standard for the piece, and now the whole thing has been filmed -- this production. We had felt that would have to be done in order to present the piece in the future. So now, in principle, I think it can be done.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_21854639/philip-glass-talks-about-his-breakthrough-work-einstein

the stenographers have shopping bags because it's time for the supermarket

FOURTH OF JULY PLUMES.

lagging, gah

playing this in two tabs that are slightly out of sync

Some eyelashes!

i forgot about the screams in this part

Just noticed that site has a link to the full libretto.

Have basically written off my evening, Yay French arts websites

Were the transitions between scenes always this quick?

yay the dancers

these and the spaceship are my favourite parts

XP - On this tour you mean? Yes, possibly not on others

They do seem to be cracking through it at a fair old pace though, the site says durée 3'20" which is odd, when I saw it it was at least four hours long.

What's killing me is how it's the same people now who have been touring this for what, nearly 2 years? What does their head sound like when they go to bed at night, that poor kid.

It's already been on for close to 3 hours

We still have New Age Sax Terror, Radio Ga-Ga Vid and Driving Miss Daisy (on a train) to go

don't forget Dan Flavin Space Aria

Haha, currently watching Levitating Polo Mint V3.

Had to turn off, don't want "Knee 4" to leave me a wreck while at w3rk.

it's gonna be available on the site for a while, I think

OH THANK GLASS.