Composer Philip Glass says he got his start performing because 'Icouldn’tgetanyone to play my music.'

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Philip Glass, one of the most influential composers of the last 50 years and an artist whose work has impacted music across the spectrum, is coming to Knoxville to perform at the Bijou Theatre on Saturday, Feb. 7, as part of the Big Ears Festival.

Glass' early music delivered the kind of shock to classical music that Jackson Pollock had brought to painting; Richard Serra to sculpture; and the International Style - with its stripped-down forms and surfaces - to architecture.

But while architecture and the visual art world quickly absorbed new directions, the classical music world wanted nothing to do with Glass' "noise."

"When I first started I couldn't get anyone to play my music," Glass said in a telephone conversation from Vancouver, British Columbia, where he was performing. "So I formed my own ensemble and played it myself."

To most classically trained musicians, as well as listeners, nothing happened in Glass' music. There was no melody, no accompaniment, or anything else that sounded like music anyone had ever heard.

Instead, the music was composed of blocks of patterns that gradually evolved or, sometimes, changed abruptly. Glass had done with music what Piet Mondrian's grids of white, red and yellow blocks divided by black lines had done to landscape painting.

"Blocks of patterns is a very good way of describing my music," Glass said.

As Glass' music began to find an audience, his small-scale compositions grew from solo and chamber music works to symphonies and operas, such as "Einstein on the Beach," his first opera, and "Waiting for the Barbarians," his latest one, based on South African novelist and Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee's allegorical story of torture and brutality.

"I've written more than 20 operas," Glass said. "At first, I wrote for languages other than English because it is so hard to set to music. It wasn't until the fourth or fifth opera that I used English. I spent a lot of time learning how to make it fit the rhythms and understandable. I learned a lot by talking to singers."

As commissions came in from around the world for film scores, operas in America and Europe, choral works and concertos, Glass' music began to change.

"The pattern blocks were still there, but they moved into the background, with other material going on in front of them," Glass said.

The success enabled him to shift his focus.

"At first I performed my own music because I had to," he said. "But now, the way I function as a performer informs me about how I compose. I use my concerts as learning processes for what I write."

"I'm also learning a whole new idea about how we memorize music. Once we learn something, the mind can be somewhat disengaged, allowing us to think about other aspects of what is going on," he said.

At 72, Glass believes keeping active as both a composer and a performer is important, not only to his personal well-being, but also the music he creates.

For his Big Ears concert, Glass will be playing solo piano works, as well as playing with cellist Wendy Sutter.

Sutter will also play a suite of pieces Glass wrote for her, "Songs and Poems for Solo Cello."

Following the 3 p.m. concert at the Bijou, Glass will have a question-and-answer session at 5 p.m. in the meeting room above the Downtown Grill and Brewery in the Woodruff Building on Gay Street.

Tickets for the Philip Glass concert are $50 and are available at all Tickets Unlimited outlets or by calling 865-656-4444.

Inner Ear passes, which includes admission to all performances for the entire Big Ears Festival, are $195. Outer Ear passes, which include admission to all performances except Philip Glass, Anthony and the Johnsons and the Festival Finale, are $100.

The complete festival listing of artists, concerts and other events is at www.bigearsfestival.com.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
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