Master of New Age music: Philip Glass at Lycabettus
One of the most innovative public figures of recent times, the composer Philip Glass, has been booked to perform two audiovisual shows at the open-air Lycabettus Theater tonight and tomorrow. Appearing with his orchestra, the Philip Glass Ensemble, the renowned artist will render the soundtrack which he composed for 1983’s pioneering film «Koyaanisqatsi,» one of the earliest efforts toward raising the public’s environmental awareness. The film, which was directed by Godfrey Reggio and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, will be projected on a giant screen during the shows. Considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, his wide range of material includes orchestral works, operas, film scores and dance pieces. His work has proved essential to the development of ambient and New Age sounds, while Glass’s fusion of Western and world music rank among the earliest and most successful global experiments of their kind. The 64-year-old Glass, who was born in Baltimore, took up the flute at the age of 8 and, at the age of 15, was accepted at the University of Chicago as a major in philosophy but spent most of his time experimenting on the piano. After graduation, Glass spent four years at the prestigious Julliard School in New York, and then bolstered his studies with a two-year period in Paris under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger, the renowned instructor and composer. Glass’s artistic breakthrough came while working with Ravi Shankar on transcribing Indian music. His growing fascination with non-Western music inspired the composer to hitchhike across North Africa and India before returning to New York in the late 1960s, where he began to develop his distinctively minimalist compositional style, or music consisting of hypnotically repetitious circular rhythms. Initially, they proved appealing to New York’s art community before eventually gaining wider appeal. Sufficient recognition, however, for Glass to live exclusively from his music did not come immediately. Rejection from the classical establishment forced him to work as a plumber and a cab driver. During this period, the artist formed the Philip Glass Ensemble, which originally performed at art galleries before moving into underground rock clubs, including the famed Max’s in Kansas City. After signing with Virgin UK – one of entrepreneur Richard Branson’s earliest business ventures that assembled a tremendous, largely ignored roster of acts which later broke into the mainstream – Glass rose to international fame with his 1976 opera «Einstein on the Beach.» The work, running close to five hours in length, which was presented at concert halls around Europe and also performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, heralded Glass’s return to classic Western harmonic elements. At the time, he was also attracting significant attention as a result of the album «North,» which he performed in rock venues and at Carnegie Hall. In subsequent years, Glass focused on theatrical projects, a field in which he has become quite renowned. For more information about the Philip Glass shows, contact the Lycabettus Theater, Lycabettus Hill, Kolonaki, tel 010.722.7209.
