Philip Glass With the New York Philharmonic

COMPOSER Philip Glass is making his debut this week at the New York Philharmonic. Yes, you heard that right. Let's move on -- it's awkward for everyone involved. But he's glad to be there now.

Glass's appearance is with his own ensemble and the orchestra itself, playing behind Godfrey Reggio's film  Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, the score for which may be the composer's best-known work. (I saw Glass and company perform this at the Hollywood Bowl a summer or two ago -- truly kickass, and this film about technology's impact on our lives seem even more pertinent now, I think, than it did when it appeared in the early '80s.)

I spoke to Glass -- who I seem to running into a lot lately -- for a story in the Playbill. Here it is. Glass was happy to look back at what became his first feature film score and one of his first big pieces.

(For all my West Coast partisanship, wishing I was in New York right now.)

The Roots of Philip Glass

THE minimalist composer is the latest subject of my Influences column in the Los Angeles Times.

We spoke about his teacher Nadia Boulanger, sitar player Ravi Shankar, composer/philosopher John Cage, Gandhi and Allen Ginsberg, who Glass got to know well.

I mentioned to Glass before we started to talk for real that I had a new respect for anyone who wrote music since I'd started a very amateur study of music theory. He told me it's not hard for kids -- as his nine-year-old son is showing him. "Their minds are much more agile."

HERE is the full piece.

He'll be at the Hollywood Bowl next Tuesday.

Philip Glass Vs. Film Music

GLASS, who makes his Hollywood Bowl debut this week, discussed his film work with me recently.

“Here’s an interesting experiment,” he said. “Play a film, any film, and then change the music. The film looks different. Then take the music, and change the film – the music doesn’t change. It’s astonishing. What does it tell us? When you put the two together, the core may be the music. Bernard Herrmann is going to sound like Bernard Herrmann no matter what you do."

HERE is my recent LATimes interview with the man who has taken film scoring -- for better or worse -- beyond the classic style of emotional underlining represented by korngold, herrmann, and others into a tonally neutral minimalism.

(at this point i've interviewed a number of the key figures in musical minimalism -- steve reich, terry riley, john adams -- so was nice to close the circle here. interesting to see how musical history treats this chapter of american music.)

Photo credit: philipglass.com