Interview With Philip Glass On Tuesday, April 4, 1995, I had the privelege of interviewing the famous composer and conductor, Philip Glass, for our campus newspaper, the Western Herald. It was after a show entitled "La Belle et la Bete" at Miller Auditorium on the campus of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The performance was the second in a series of works done in collaboration with the films of Jean Cocteau. This particular piece was a merging of the film and opera mediums. Cameron Barrett: I've seen both of your films.Both of the films done in conjunction with film maker Goddfrey Reggio. Philip Glass: Yes. There are three. Barrett: There are three? Glass: There's a third one called "Anime Munde." I think you can get it on video. I believe it's on laser (disc) also. It's a nice one. It's a short one. Only about a half an hour. Barrett: Are there any plans for doing a third film with Goddfrey Reggio. Glass: Yes. There's actually a trilogy of films. The first two were "Koyaanisqatisi" and "Powaaqatsi." The third one is called "Naqqoyaqatsi." That's N - A - Q - Q - O - Y - A (pause) Q - A - T - S- I. Barrett: Naqqoyaqatsi? Glass: Yes. So there is plans to do that and he has trouble raising money for these films. They don't make money in the traditional sense. Barrett: They are very good. Glass: Yes, I know. But we can't get the money to make them. It takes about five years between movies and in fifteen years we've done three. That's pretty pathetic, isn't it? Barrett: It depends on how you look at it. Glass: We could have done more. We could have done six. Barrett: True. Glass: If we had the money we would have done just that. Barrett: There are a lot of people who enjoy those films. Glass: I know. I know. And we will make the third one. But getting the money has been difficult. Barrett: What company, what production company makes those? Glass: Well, it's actually a combination of Godfrey's institute and my own production company. Barrett: And what are they called? Glass: His company is called the Institute for Regional Education and it's based in Sante Fe. And my company is called Euphorbia Productions. It's a production company based in New York. Barrett: You were born in Baltimore and you have lived and traveled all over the world. What and who are your inspirations? Glass: Well, I think the most important, the musical ones, have been Ravi Shankar and one of my teachers Nadia Boulanger. But, that's the people I directly studied with. There have been a lot of other inspiring musicians both alive and dead. The classical ones, but also the people from jazz like Bud Power, Troy Parker and John Coltraine. Allen Ginsberg. John Cage I knew. Barrett: Do you have plans for doing anything more with Alan Ginsberg? Glass: We did performances together. We talked about it, but we don't have any direct plans right now. Nothing really in place. We see each other frequently. We're in the same neighborhood, in New York City. Barrett: Do you enjoy touring? Glass: Yeah, I do. I do a fair amount. We're doing this year, forty...more than forty, maybe forty-five of these shows. And I'll do maybe twenty concerts, solo concerts. So it's probably sixty-five. Barrett: You do piano and... Glass: Piano...solo concerts... Barrett: Are there any other instruments you play? Glass: I did two concerts with Alan Ginsberg just last month. One in Lincoln, Nebraska and one in Cleveland. Barrett: I was curious to find out that the opera we saw tonight. There was only one showing. Was there a reason for that? Glass: Here? Uh.....that was a big hall. We didn't fill that hall. So...in Chicago we'll do two and L.A. we'll do three and New York we did four. So...it depends on the place. When we go to place like Ann Arbor we have a very full house. But I think this kind of work is...it's not film entertainment type stuff. It's something between opera and film. So that...It's a sophisticated kind of audience. It isn't escapist, it isn't let's-go-to-the-movies kind of stuff. You have to be interested in opera or Cocteau or me or you have to have a special...it's not something....I think it's entertainment, but a lot of people when they will go out for entertainment, they wouldn't think of going to this. And in the big places like Boston or Washington, you can find that audience.We did, I think, four of these shows in New York and we could fill the house every night in New York. But then you have to have a big base. A big population base to do that. How many people live in Kalamazoo? Barrett: There's uh...250,000 in the county. Glass: In the county...and then the town? Barrett: In the town I believe there's, don't quote me on this, I think it's about 150,000. Between 100,000 and 150,000. Glass: So, it's a fairly small...So in a town this size, you'll get 700 maybe 800 people. Same thing in Lewisburg. It depends on the size. The population size gives you an idea of what your base is. But, when you do a tour like this and we'll play in Chicago and Boston and Philadelphia, but along the way we will play in smaller places. First of all, it's good for the people who come. That's part of the idea of touring is to get to work out of the big cities and to places where people who might not otherwise...like there was a woman here tonight who said it was the first time she had been to an opera. And, you know,there are a lot of people who would get to see an opera for the first time because of this kind of thing. To hear real opera singers singing live, you know. So, there are other factors involved in choosing a tour like this. For one thing, it does...it's a constructive activity to bring this work to places that normally might not get it. I see that here the city opera comes with the touring company and so people do come through Kalamazoo. There's a big school here. But there are places where that doesn't happen. A tour isn't made up of only big cities. It's made up a lot of little cities and then the big cities too. Barrett: What are your basic plans for the future? Glass: Well, I have a new collaboration with Cocteau's work coming up called "Les Enfants Terribles" which is the third one. That will be a touring piece. I just did a ballet for La Scala which is not a touring piece but it will be done in Italy. It will probably tour in Italy but not here. I'm doing a new piece with Bob Wilson who's a designer and director who I worked with on "Einstein On the Beach." that will be about two years. And then there is an opera for the Cologne Opera and an opera that's in Germany and another opera for the Heidelburg Opera which is also in Germany. A new film with Goddfrey, we hope. Mainly opera, dance, film, a few symphonies, and string quartets. But mainly theater, music theater. That's mainly what I do. Barrett: Do you have anything to say to the young musicians and composers out there who see you as an idol? Glass: Oh. There's a music school here, isn't there? And there are composers here, aren't there? Well, I think one of the most important things for me is when playing music. And my teachers didn't encourage me to do that. I was, like most composers, begin playing an instrument...piano, violin or something...and then what happened in my generation when we went to music school, we went to become composers and our teachers said " Don't play anymore. Now you're just going to write." And they really led me astray. For a long time, I didn't play. And finally, when I was about thirty I put together an ensemble and started playing again. What that did, is that did several things. For one thing, it freed me from the judgements of other people who decide whether or not my music should be played, because I could play it myself. So I was liberated from that whole system of sending music out and waiting for an answer. The second thing that was most important was it allowed me to see the audiences, to meet people. Like tonight, after this show, you saw the two or three dozen people there. That happens in every city. And you talk to people and after all, music is essentially a communicative experience. It's not an abstract. It's not a philosophical or mathematical pursuit. These kinds of...any art form that has any authentic way of being in the world. It has that being in the world because of it's connection with people. And then when out playing you see who those people are. Their not just dots. For example, there's a woman who heard an opera for the first time or some guy who's studying who the hell knows history, whatever. Okay, that's the second thing. And the third thing is that...when you play music you complete a cycle of activity that begins with an idea, a composition, and a performance. And I think this cycle of activities is incomplete if any of those things is missing. Obviously you have to have the idea and you have to write it down, but if you don't actually go through the process of playing it. Now we don't play all things. I can't play a symphony by myself and I can't play an opera by myself. But, I do a lot of these other activities so that I'm not out the process in a certain way. So that's the first thing I would say is that playing an instrument is very important. The second thing is to be aware of the fact that the environment you are in now, the school environment, is actually not the music world. It's a school world. The world of music has to do with performances and records and radio broadcasts and discussions with people like yourself. It doesn't really happen in school. It happens outside of it. And school is important. I went for twenty years. Eight to twenty years I was in school. I never went back after that. I did a little bit too of it. But, sometimes school's very comfortable. And being comfortable is not always the best environment for creative people. Probably being uncomfortable a little bit in some ways would probably be more...would be better. So, I think the thing to do is... so, my second point is to just to remember that you're in school. You're here to learn. And there's a lot to learn, but that isn't where the world of music really lives. It lives in the world and there's already radio stations and record stores and it lives in concert stores. It lives when people get together to play music for each other. It doesn't actually live in the classrooms. Barrett: How do you feel about mainstream music? Music that the younger generation listens to. Glass: Tell me what that is. Lee Velo (photographer): As opposed to classical you mean? Barrett: Right, as opposed to opera and classical. Glass: You mean people like Natalie Merchant, people like...I know a lot of those people and I work with them too. I did a record arrangement, a song arrangement for Dorissa Monte. Do you know her? A Brazilian, a beautiful Brazilian singer. And I did an arrangement for Susan Vega, for one of her records. I have a lot of friends who work in the field of popular and commercial music. There's another young guy named Mayfax Twin who's a guy, a dance-music guy from London. I just did a remix of his music. And now he's going to do a remix of my music. I'm in touch with that world. I don't spend a lot of time with it, but I do a couple of song arrangements a year. I did already this year two. And I do concerts with them sometimes. We just did a big concert in New York which have Jimmy Don Gilmore and Natalie Merchant and a young Irish singer named Kitale Kinak and Alan Ginsberg, my pal, myself, a fiddler from Cape Britton called Ashley McIsaacs. We get together for a concert at Carnegie Hall to raise money for something we were interested in. It was actually a museum called Tibet House which is about preserving a culture of a people which are being threatened. Barrett: I know you've traveled through the Middle East and you've followed the Eastern religion. A lot of people say they can see the Eastern influence in your music. Glass: Maybe so. It certainly...to my ear, it sounds very American. However, one of the important things that's happened in the last forty years has been...we talk about how the world has gotten smaller. How we've learned a lot about the other parts of the world. John Cage was very important. I remember he wrote a book called "A Year From Monday" and in the title page of the book he says "This is to the day when the United States will just be another part of the world. No more or no less." And so, we've gotten...that happened in my lifetime and it's already happened in your lifetime, it happened before you were even aware of it in certain ways. We've seen that the western culture is part of the world culture. We're less Euro-centric or Ameri-centric than we used to be. We are still very much that way. We still think of...the real art happens here, the real life is here. It's interesting, but it isn't as real as what we do. In fact, one of the things that traveling has done for me is to see the validity of all the cultures. To see their values and to see their authenticity and that's indicative in my work and I think it's indicative to a lot of the work of younger artists. They tend to look in terms of a global culture. That doesn't mean it all sounds the same, but it does mean that there is an equivalency of value in terms of African music or American music or European music or Balonese music. We don't think of one as being more high art than another. That's an important...it's a crucial lesson for us to learn. As Americans, we...it's a hard lesson for us, because at the moment, this is the dominant culture. This is the dominant culture economically. It's the dominant culture culturally. We export jeans and soda pop and it's all over the world. And this is the dominant culture right now, but it's dominant from the commercial point of view, it may not be dominant in terms of other values. So, we tend to view the world through this kind of dominance and it's a very distorting. Probably the best thing that you can do, as young people, is to go out and...and...probably is one of the best things you can do. It tends to...you get to...you tend to see the world thus through the eyes of your birthplace and your region and culture and you start to see that we're just another part of the world. No more and no less which is what John Cage was talking about. Barrett: Do you find it's hard to reach the younger generation with your music? Glass: No. Barrett: Do you think the younger generation has more of an open mind? Glass: Generally they do. The trouble with being young is that you get older. It is easy to be idealistic when you're twenty, it much harder to be it when you're fifty. And every one of you will be fifty, hopefully. So, it's easy to be avante-garde and on the cutting edge and all of that when you're younger. It's natural. We're less threatened by it. It all seems very fresh to us. The thing you have to do is hold on to that as you get older and not lose that. And that's hard to do. It's hard to be...it's easy to be idealistic when you're twenty. It's hard to be one at fifty. It's very hard to be one at seventy. Maybe it's easier as you get older. Maybe it gets easier later on, I don't know yet. But, the young people are good audiences for me. My audiences are very mixed. Even tonight, I saw a lot of older people here and a lot of people about your age. But of course, that's natural, that will happen in a big city too.