Phillip Glass by Chuck Close
|It was a presentation Glass gave while I was a student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design that altered the trajectory of my intellectual pursuits.|
A recent rereading of his 2015 biography, Words Without Music: A Memoir, served up a reminder of the many ways in which Phillip Glass has had an outsized impact on my life. His music is, of course, fascinating and often very good. Though it really started with the movie Koyaanisqatsi which I had the good fortune to watch accompanied by a live orchestra playing the soundtrack, it was the discovery of the album Glassworks around the same time that kick-started a collection that has since grown substantially.
Personal favorites also include collaborations with Brian Eno and David Bowie, Low and Heroes, as well as the Concertos and other works conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, with the oddly titled Saxophone Quartet Concerto being quite engaging. However, despite the effort expended, his operas (like those of another favorite composer of both Glass and myself, Mozart) have just never found a place in my musical world.
Richard Serra, Phillip Glass, and Robert Fiore 1969
The book describes in vivid detail what living in New York was like at a time when fine art and music were undergoing huge shifts in form and function. Phillip Glass worked to pay the bills as a studio assistant with artists like Richard Serra. Glass did some of the heavy lifting involved with creating some of Serra’s early molten metal works. The involvement of Glass within the New York dance scene of the 1970s was a surprise. His subsequent visibility and ultimately well-deserved respect and commercial success were hard-earned and long in coming, with bills being paid by doing manual labor and driving a taxi instead of earning music royalties. An early interest in Buddhism and work with Tibetan refugees, set in motion passions that have endured throughout his life and career. Glass talks about his spirituality in an engaging manner that persuades without lecturing.
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Philip_Glass_Florence 1993
It was a presentation Phillip Glass gave while I was a student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design that altered the trajectory of my intellectual pursuits. Coming a few years after the (relative) success around 1976 of his first major opera, Einstein on the Beach, he was at the time of the lecture working on another major project, the opera Akhnaten, which would debut in 1984. His discussion of Akhenaten’s life and place in history stoked the fires of both my imagination and intellect. That his account turned out to be more fanciful than factual proved unimportant. The life and times of Akhenaten remain an enduring interest of mine.
His conversation also provided a back-handed endorsement of the interest I had been developing in the Kabbalah. My mentor and friend Frank Gaard would facilitate a fascination within me of Jewish mysticism to the point that it is a formidable influence on my thinking about religion to this day. In tandem with Taoism – another topic that fully manifested itself during my time in college and resonates with Glass – thinking about the variety of religious experiences found a permanent place in my studies. I attribute these near obsessions in my life largely to Glass by accident, and Gaard by intent.
Glass narrates a life well lived and worth thinking about. The biography is accessible and highly recommended, as is a sampling of his music. Plus, Glass looks so very cool in so many works by artist Chuck Close.