Philip Glass: Classic or Dud? Search and Destroy

I'd also like to briefly hijack this thread and remind everyone that if you're a fan of minimal piano pieces then you need Hans Otte's Das Buch der Klänge in your life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwIxpa6OTIE&list=PLmba6uZehumsDtOObBvOqC7CvF8RX9u9I

The link appears to be broken, perhaps because it refers to a playlist. Just search 'hans otte das buch der klänge henck' on YT and it should come up (Herbert Henck's recording surpasses Hans Otte's own imho).

there's a recording on naxos of that right

Not to my knowledge. The Henck recording is on ECM, whereas Otte's own is on Kuckuck and Celestial Harmonies.

Glass sometimes teeters on the brink of self-parody/kitsch to me, possibly because of the weak/easy melodies, possibly because his music does often work better as a backdrop for movies and documentaries. I'll try to explore some of his more recent stuff, since I'm so out of touch. Curious that Reich, Adams et al. never got into Hollywood, to the best of my knowledge. Who are Glass's other crossover peers, Gorecki? Part?

I guess so, yeah. And precisely for the reasons you describe. I do think Pärt is a far more interesting composer than his supposed peers, though. Aside from the famous 3rd symphony, I find Górecki insufferable both as ear candy and as a Bearer of Grave News.

It's back! (many XPs to Jon)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cSo6FaqyX0

Premiering the Lodger Symphony with Angelique Kidjo on the South Bank tonight, wish I could be there.

Yes, I was looking at the page for it this morning thinking just the same.

The new piece with Third Coast Ensemble (on Spotify, etc.) is definitely worth a listen. His first all-percussion composition.

Oh cool - I dig the way he has used percussion in his symphonies

realized I haven't stanned my piano crush Víkingur Ólafsson's Glass album in here

https://dg.lnk.to/vikingur_glass_pianoworks

And today, the whole ten yards -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTXIQZQtZS8

I like this, it's a little starker than the Nonsuch version.

https://vimeo.com/193274320

If that were in slow motion and three hours long it would make a good Godfrey Reggio film.

Saw something recently where he said that he'd tried to get away from his signature sound, but couldn't. Seemed unhappy about it, or at least humbled.
His new music for Lodger lyrics couldn't be any worse than the original album, which I always found frustrating after Heroes and Low, not to mention most of Bowie's others up to that point.
North Star is a good soundtrack from the 70s---haven't played it since then, but did later see the film, a documentary about the artist Mark de Suvero, and thought it worked well both ways, as accompaniment or stand-alone record. The doc starts with the artist, swimming to the surface of a lake and gradually emerging, looking like an ancient statue of a hero or god--but then he lurches up onto the land and starts scuttling uphill before reaching his balance. He was injured in his loft studio's freight elevator, but he's adjusting, and his own sculptures, which at first look precarious, have their own sense of symmetry.
Same with the music, although it's not grand or heroic; as I recall, each track develops one fairly distinctive theme from small segments, riffs even. instrumental and/or vocal, and it all fits. Didn't seem compelling---I was more into punk, Funkadelic, Miles at the time---but refreshingly different for my '77.

Xgau recommended it to Eno fans, which is why I bought it (also because somebody else related it to Ray Manzarek, and later Glass said he enjoyed the Doors' Fillmore East shows, also produced Manzarek's album of Carmina Burana).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuY82p6MSag

Just posting this here because I have a slight obsession with this composition and I've seen it get zero love so far on the thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCvhAAJwdtY

Since this thread is live again, and I've got it in my clipboard from the Beck poll thread:

https://soundcloud.com/dunvagenmusic/nyc-73-78

Been seven years now, and this still just takes my breath away.

Oh wow @ complete Music in 12 Parts. Sometimes I forget how good that early stuff can be.

A recording of the MI12P Barbican concert in 2017 (which I saw) went up on D!me@dozen the other day.

I've been enjoying this transcription for piano of the Mishima score http://www.makinamekawa.com/mishima/

Saw him and the Ensemble in Dublin on Saturday doing Music in Twelve Parts. The concert was great but he did not look well. He didn't take part in the following evening's performance of Koyaanisqatsi and won't be at the Barbican tomorrow night for Music with Changing Parts (the Ensemble will play without him). Hope he gets well soon.

some kind of drama in the audience yesterday too

What a show. Unreal after all these years. Hope #philipglass is better tomorrow. We had a wonderful night apart from dramatics at the end. Get in the bloody ambulance

— Twatter a right dump (@C1ust3r) October 27, 2019

Phelim McDermott's production of Akhnaten looked even more gorgeous at the Met in New York earlier this month than when I saw it at the ENO a few years back. Not that I saw it live but I saw the live broadcast in cinemas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSn_UAquOfw

There's an audio stream up on the BBC Radio 3 website for another three weeks or so.

Wonder how he's doing, it's always at the back of my mind now when I see these thread revives.

I think he's OK at the moment following his illness in Europe, he was out and about for the final performance of Akhnaten the other week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD7961Hp99A

A previously unrecorded piece from 1970, Music in Eight Parts, hit streaming services today. I reviewed it.

Oh nice, I think I found a midi file of this a while back and made a little version in ProTools, was it an unfinished manuscript or something that someone found on his publisher's archive? I can't quite recall.

Ah, the answers lie therein :)

Hey I went to college with Peter Hess! Oberlin Jazz major, really nice dude.

The oberlin -> Glass and related projects runs deep.

Just a heads up that the Met website is streaming the recent productions of Akhnaten and Satyagraha this week. Not 100% convinced by the staging of Satyagraha but the Akhnaten is a total masterpiece:

https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/week-14/opera-streams-weekly-guide/

The last concert I went to before quarantine and everything started was a performance of Music in Twelve Parts, on February 29 at the Annenberg Center in Philly. It was pretty amazing.

Yeah, I saw about Eight Parts in The New Yorker recently, want to hear that.
Posted about xpost Twelve Parts on Rolling Reissues (label has a bunch of others on bandcamp, incl full streams of their recent Morricone and Pharoah Sanders reissues):
https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0913454654_10.jpg
Music in Twelve Parts. Concert à Paris​,​1975
by Philip Glass
Lost PHILIP GLASS Recording from 1975 (1h10).

ORTF Recordings by the Philip Glass Sextet,
live at Studio 104, Maison de la Radio, Paris.

Also included a very rare Philip Glass interview from 1974 in his NYC loft during the rehearsals of this piece, produced for the french radio by Daniel Caux.
Remastered from the orginal master tapes (ORTF).
he newly discovered and unreleased concert from 1975 recorded by the Philip Glass Sextet at La Maison de Radio, Paris.
The sextet is composed of Philip Glass, Jon Gibson, Dickie Landry,
Michael Riesman, Joan La Barbara and Richard Peck.

Music in Twelve Parts is a set of twelve pieces written between 1971 and 1974. This performance in France includes part 1, 2, 3, 11 and 12 on a double LP.(+ download code)
© INA 1974-1975
℗ 2019 Transversales Disques
credits
released April 24, 2020
full album streamhttps://transversales.bandcamp.com/album/music-in-twelve-parts-concert-paris-1975

That label's unwillingness to sell their releases digitally unless you buy the vinyl is annoying to me.

Yeah, plus it was originally sold out at source so I bought it from a distributor, but those copies didn't even come with a download code. wtf.

They may have vinyl rights but not digital rights.

I'm sure that's right, but in that case how can they give digital copies away with sales of the vinyl?

Yeah, I'll just listen on bandcamp for now.

Thought revive was about two operas streaming over the weekend.

it was

i watched most of the Doctor Atomic performance last night. filmed plays are strange to watch, with actors/singers making facial expressions intended for the last row, seen close up

Must have missed that post(/zing) the same way I missed most of both those operas. Maybe I can listen and look at photos or videos. I like Doctor Atomic, saw it at the Met, but didn’t watch the stream.

Spotted on the official Glass Twitter account:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eja2E-mWkAARtcc.jpg

Escalators of Death!

Met website is streaming Akhnaten this evening.

https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/week-35/program-notes/akhnaten/

I came here to post just that. I love a good spectacle, watching it now.

Seems to be in the on demand library now as well

I think that's right, but at least for right now it is free, which is the big appeal.