Philip Glass: Classic or Dud? Search and Destroy

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.

I thought this was beautiful, ridiculous and amazing. I'm glad I put in the time.

I'm still so happy they filmed the last full production of Einstein and made it available, it's wonderful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Io2Jta1Nc

wow, thanks. this is great.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQgj2kv8QxE

Music with Changing Parts at Carnegie Hall in 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsKPL35s89I

Excellent, thanks so much!

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

Wow, so I guess the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed a Glass symphony last night *for the first time ever*? Not a premiere, apparently literally the first time a Glass symphony has ever been performed by the CSO. Wild. He was there, too:

https://preview.redd.it/l76gc1pqgti81.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=392d3b46d2b32c975298118212bcd898d930b454

There was a nice posting on his FB page.

"While a student at the University of Chicago in the 1950’s, Philip Glass would spend Friday afternoons at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This weekend, Philip has the great joy of attending Symphony No. 11 conducted by Maestro Riccardo Muti"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkIPQUraD7c

East Village with friends, July 2022 pic.twitter.com/pB2pGSUvzY

— Philip Glass (@philipglass) July 27, 2022

So that's what happened to Mitch Pileggi of The X-Files. Unless that actually is Mitch Pileggi, in which case this joke doesn't work. I don't really care about Mitch Pileggi.

I have a Philip Glass anecdote. Many years ago I took the train to Montpellier, and in the foyer of the station was a big poster for a production of Einstein on the Beach at the local opera house. It struck me that the date was that day's date! I remember thinking "that's today's date". And the production was happening in about twenty minutes. So I went to the opera house and stood outside it. But I've never been to an opera and I have no idea of the etiquette. Can you just buy tickets at the door? I have no idea.

That is my Philip Glass anecdote. According to Google it was 16 March 2012. I remember thinking "I will never have this chance again because he must be in his seventies". Instead I walked around Montpellier and found a free exhibition of photographs by W Eugene Smith. Little tiny prints with red crop marks on them.

I remember he did a remix of a song by S'Express. Philip Glass, not W Eugene Smith. Of an S'Express song. Which made sense because I remember reading that he was an early adopter of samplers - EMU EMUlators - that he used as a compositional aid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiCH2WJ_lvY

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg "in concert" version of Einstein on the Beach with Suzanne Vega doing the spoken bits.

I never noticed the similarities between "Building" and Pink Floyd's "On the Run" before.

Great, thanks for sharing, I immediately scrolled forward to see if SV says 'Kalamazooooooo', sadly not :)

My local Regal cinema is showing Akhnaten on July 26 as part of The Met's summer encore series. Maybe they all are, not certain.

https://www.metopera.org/season/summer-events/live-in-hd-summer-encores

I'm going to try to go!

nice, its showing at a theater near me thank u regal cinema