Phillip Glass is a world-renowned pioneering composer and pianist. Classically trained, you might assume his musical influences flow from that structured genre. Although he studied the classics at Julliard, he was just as influenced by the records his father sold at his radio shop — blues, country, folk, even rock and roll. His world travels, discovering the music of various cultures, helped guide his experimental minimalist masterpieces.
Glass was in Pittsburgh with his ensemble in 2002 to play music with film — “a real time live music event,” as he called it. Glass sat with Rosemary Welsch to talk about the event, his musical adventures, and his work scoring films for Martin Scorsese and Peter Weir.
Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Rosemary Welsch: Phillip Glass is here in town. You have some connection, which I only found out about today. But the place that I want to start with this is when you get to the point where you are in your career, where you've been making music for 30 years, that at least it's well known that you're famous has come up over 30 years and people know who you are, and your music has been challenging people and also gotten very widely accepted as you've done a lot of major films. There is the legend, there's the lore, there is the mythology that builds up around your name, the truth, the half-truths, the things that people end up believing about you. So as I was doing all this research on you, I kept coming upon this one story that begins all of your biographies. You're a little boy and you're in Baltimore, and your dad has a little radio shop.
Phillip Glass: That's true.
Welsch: And he repairs radios, but he also sells records. And the ones that don't sell, he brings home.
Glass: And we listen to them. And he brought them home because he wanted to know what was wrong with them. He said, “Well, there's nothing wrong with these records. And if I can figure out what's wrong with this music, then I won't buy the wrong music.” Because he didn't want to have records he couldn't sell.
So we bring this music home and he listened to it over and over again till he loved it. And it turned out to be a lot of modern music people like Bartok at that time. You have to remember this is the 1940s, Bartok or Stravinsky or these things that were really scary modern music. Then he ended up loving it. He also loved Schubert. He loved Schubert and Shostakovich and Bartok. So I end up with a very esoteric kind of music education.
But at the same time, he began working at that same store when I was 12. It was a story that all kinds of music we had in those days, what we call a country music today. But those if we called it hillbilly music, which, by the way, was very similar to the music that you heard in Pittsburgh because it was coming from the same places that music was coming in from West Virginia and from, the Appalachians was coming up to Baltimore. It was coming over here to Pittsburgh.
When I eventually lived in Pittsburgh for a short time in the early 60s for a couple of years, I found that same kind of music that was here. But, he also taught me that the only thing that made music really good music or bad music was the quality. It wasn't whether it was classical music or popular music or rock ‘n’ roll. He was a wonderful man. He had a wonderful sense. He wasn't educated in music, but he was open to music. When the first Elvis Presley records came in, we were selling them in the store. Everything went through my hands in those days. Besides that, I had a classical music education. I went to the Peabody Conservatory and eventually went to Juilliard and eventually studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. So I had a very classical education, but at the same time, I was in the record store in the summertime, in the east side of Baltimore selling rhythm and blues records. It was a very good education because it left me in a position to enter the music world in a very fresh way.
Welsch: All this music that you're taking in, you're still going to school and there's a certain way that you're educated as you're going through that process and you're studying with different people, and you start to move around the world and you're hearing more. But more than anything, you're being impacted by the people that you know all it takes a while for you to really discover who you are musically.
Glass: That was true for me. I mean, I was writing music when I was 15, but I don't think I wrote a piece of music that sounded like me until I was close to 30. And that's not unusual.
There was a big thing that happened. The major thing that was, I was living in Europe. I met Ravi Shankar, I became his assistant. I began going to India. It was 1965, and I discovered world music. Before there was world music. And otherwise, I began discovering the great traditions of music that came from Africa, from Asia. And that was the big influence of my music. After I finished my conservatory studies and I began learning music all over again.
Welsch: You know, world music has always been out there. You know, it didn't exist. So what you're telling me is that you're taking influences that have been around for a thousand years and you're putting it into your music and people are saying, well, this is very new.
Glass: It seemed that way at the time. And it's true. I was a little ahead of the crowd, so to speak. I think that makes it sound not as spontaneous as it really was. What was really happening was I was hearing music that I loved, and the music I love ended up in my music. And that's what that's how music. That's how musicians are influenced and that's how they grow. They put in things that move them and that they're connected to and that's, what makes it authentic. If we just cobbled together a little bit of African music and some Asian music and American music, but if you just kind of stuck together, like kind of a Frankenstein monster, that's what it would be. But if it goes through the person, through the composer or through the musician and it becomes part of his own, his own musical voice, then it becomes that then what can come out can be fresh and can be it can be influenced by the world of music. And it can have a powerful effect.
Welsch: Obviously, you have merged the arts, as many other musicians do. It's not just about one type of art. You have worked a lot with film. And this is what this this project here in town this weekend is about.
Glass: It's a very special thing because what we're doing, we're playing live music with movies and we're not accompanying the movies. We're actually creating concerts with film, and it's very different with the ensemble. They're about, I think 11 of us, the synthesizers are wind, players are two percussionists or three singers. We're sitting in front of the screen. Are the screams above and behind us, but you can see us, so we're not hiding in the corner somewhere. Part of the event is the fact that this is live music. This is live music happening in real time. And while we're doing it, the music, the film, these are new films, too. But these are not old silent movies. These are new silent movies. These are movies that were made for this, kind of presentation.
I've been doing this for about 18 or 20 years, and I kind of began doing it accidentally. The film we're doing tomorrow, and I kind of because it was the first one we did the “Not What We're Doing Tonight,” which was a collection of short films voiced by young and new filmmakers and some people that are some very well known, not so very well known. This music was written for the films and the films were made for the music. It’s a different art form. It's not just a concert. It's not just a movie. It’s one of those things where one plus one equals three or four. It's not one plus one equals two. You get more than you put in when you do it this way.
Welsch: Chances are that you've if you've gone to see movies, whether they were silent or not or whether you've gone to see concerts, whether they were classical or not, you've not had this particular experience.
Glass: There are people that do that do accompaniments for silent movies in a kind of, retro kind of style, you know? And it's because, after all, in the 20s, when movies were young and new, there wasn't we didn't have synchronized soundtracks and people played it on the piano or they did something to or there were maybe a little live in orchestras that played along with the films, but this is quite different. We're not following the films. Sometimes the films are following the music because we're we created them together.
Welsch: Well, I've heard a lot of people say that, that soundtracks can actually be very manipulative. They try to lead you into what they want you to feel about the film.
Glass: That's the point of it. The emotional point of view. It sounds funny, but that's how we talk about the emotional point of view of the film is set up by the music and a good filmmaker like I've worked with some very good ones that Martin Scorsese and Peter Weir and some very good filmmakers I've worked with. They totally know that the music is their best ally after, of course, having a good story and good actors and good photography, the thing that they really want is to have music that that leads you to the film. When you say manipulative, that's a negative way of saying, I call it leading you through the film in a way. And sometimes with kind discussing, we take your hand and we lead you right through, and it's no more manipulative. However, the thing about images, images by themselves don't really tell a story. You think they tell the story. The music tells you the story that you're seeing. That's what really happens.
Welsch: Philip Glass is here in the WYEP Studios. He is performing this weekend with his ensemble. This is going to be at the Byham Theater, which is downtown, and it's going to be film, and you're going to be playing with your ensemble.
Glass: Yeah, it's a real time live music event. It's a real-time live music event with film. And that's and it's a this is a powerful medium, live music and film. You're seeing and hearing at the same time.
Welsch: You know, at your point in your career, it would be very easy for you to just sit back and not go out and perform.
Glass: Well, that wouldn't be any fun, would it?
Welsch: It doesn't sound like it would be, but I think a lot of people choose to do that. You have not done that. You tour a lot. You get out there!
Glass: Fifty-six countries. It keeps me practicing. It keeps my ensemble together. And that's important to keep on a regular. This group has been together, basically. Some of them have been with me for 30 years. Some of them are younger. There are some singers that are in their 20s, but some of the players are in their 50s and 60s.
Welsch: Well, there's a loyalty there that is rarely found in business of any type today.
Glass: And I guess the music is still challenging for them and it's enjoyable. We do work enough to keep it together. But they also want to feel that there is some quality in some that they're doing something that has that means something that people that people enjoy it and that not just that, but that it's adding something to the to the world that we live in. And I've been able to attract people who felt that way about the music. And we've stuck together.
Welsch: You’ve mentioned earlier about the different music that you heard from around the world. It's affected you. And obviously the people that you meet affect you. Ideologies can affect the music. And I was thinking, I read somewhere that you speak five different languages. As you speak that many if you as you travel the world and you hear different languages and there's different things coming at you constantly, all your senses, that has to impact everything that you do that ends up in your music. I'm not surprised that you would travel the world and make as many different sounds as you do.
Glass: I started when I was so young, traveling from a relatively small town like Baltimore, which is very much like Pittsburgh, by the way, because there'ssuch a big world outside of the place you grew up. And when I grew up in Baltimore, I knew I wasn't going to stay in Baltimore. I was heading for New York, and it took me a while to get there, but I was in Europe, and I was very excited about the world by the world outside of Baltimore. I don't go back to Baltimore very much, and it was a good place to grow up in that way. A good place to get started in a way because it made everything else seem so interesting when I left.
Welsch: Now you're considered a quote unquote serious composer.
Glass: What do you ask? You know, some people think I'm serious. Some people maybe not.
Welsch: As you approach your music, though, do you ever approach your music with a sense of humor?
Glass: It comes up in the music. I just did another live music score for the film “Dracula.” The Bela Lugosi from 1931. And there's some very funny things in it. There's this guy Renfield. The one that eats the bugs. And all the music is Renfield. It's sinister but kind of loony, like Looney Tunes. So there's the nice thing about film is that there's a big gamut of emotion. We did another film score with LaBelle about the “Beauty and the Beast,” and this is very romantic. So Koyaanisqatsi, which we're going to do tomorrow night is very high tech, very techno. So by working and film, we can cover a big range of the human emotional way. And I wanted to say one thing also that I didn't want to forget about this is that we have a conductor, Michael. Michael Regan conducts. He conducts the music not with a click track or metronome, but he watches the film and he knows how to follow them. We've done this a lot of times. He had to learn how to do this. And he synchronizes the film live to the music, whether it's recognizes the music, like to the film we are playing and watching Michael, we're not looking at the movie.
Welsch: It must be interesting being directed by somebody else.
Glass: I'm actually also watching over Michael's shoulder, watching to see how close he is to the sync. And I find it very interesting the way these things, because I'm aware of the fact that there's always a little drift, a little bit of breathing room between the music and the film. It's that it's that's the live part of it. The fact that it's not just mechanical, it's people playing the way anyone would play with the tempo, you know, the moves, the tempo of the moves of the film or the musical speed up and slow down in a very natural way. Just the way, just the way we do when we talk.
Welsch: You just mentioned something mechanical, so I'm going to bring something up. As I was driving into work this morning, was hearing this story on NPR, and this guy was talking about computer programs like Pro Tools and things that allow an average person with maybe minimal musical background to be able to create or recreate music. And the theory behind this was, well, you know, this is going to lead to the fact that there's probably not going to be very many professional musicians in the future. And I've heard this kind of thing before, and I mentioned this to you earlier and you had a you had a pretty quick response to that one.
Glass: This is an idea that's come up. The first music computer took up a city block. And people were afraid that people would start playing music because now we would have synthesizer music. The fact is that people like to watch people play where people are people-watchers. And also, I'll give you an example, if you have a record here of, let's say, a concerto that you like, and then someone comes in town to play it, you may very well spend $25 or $30 to go downtown to hear somebody play the same thing that you have a record of, because hearing it live is better, is different. And you and we'd like to see people doing it.
The other thing is, the fact that everyone is getting into music is not a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. I think the more people that are playing music, the level of playing is going to go up, as it has always. It's always gotten better. I don't think you make it kind of by making it democratic, you make it less. What happens is that the talent will emerge, the talent will always emerge. And I think it might actually be helpful in the sense that let more people get involved with making music and figuring out music and trying to make it themselves, and they'll become music lovers. And those are the people that we together as a large community of composers and performers and music lovers, we all need to be we all. We need to have a vibrant and vital community like that. And I think that all of these things are actually good things.
Welsch: Well, here's something that I posed to you a little earlier. You know, whenever I talk to people about music, I'll hear somebody say something like, well, they don't make music the way they used to. And most of the time they're talking about popular music, but sometimes it can be about classical music. So the question becomes, how finite is music or how infinite is it? It doesn't really change that much.
Glass: It has changed. And if we think back, what would Mozart think of the concert I'm going to do tonight? I mean, he was one of the great geniuses of all time, a creative genius as he was. He probably couldn't imagine music that would be happening 200 years later. He if he could have imagined that, he would have written it. On the other hand, if we look at the human race and culture and the way we develop with clothes and food and buildings and poetry and music and cars and transportation, whatever it might be. We are now in a very accelerating curve of change in the last 10 years. How has the internet been around? Is it less than five or six years?
Welsch: Certainly within the last decade it's changed.
Glass: The world has totally changed. It's changing governments. I mean, governments can't control information anymore. Places that had bottled up their populations, like Russia and China, are having terrifically hard time trying to tell people what's going on because they can find out themselves now. So technology and this is one of the things that that, by the way, Koyaanisqatsi, that film is about technology is the genie out of the bottle. Once technology is all about, we don't know where it's going to go. And so we can say that about music. Music has been lifted up by technology and placed in a completely different place. It's on a fast track to a place where we don't know where we're going. I think that the exciting thing for people involved in it is just keeping up with it.
Welsch: And 200 years from now.
Glass: Who knows?
Welsch: Could you even begin —
Glass: I would guess this I would guess that theater and music will be coming closer together. I would guess that the that that audiences will be interactively working with musicians in a way so that they so that the live performances will be responding instantly to the intuitions of the audience. I think the separation between audience and between performer and listener is going to change. That's reason I'm guessing that is because the technology looks like it's going that way. And once the technology is there, the people will be there to take up the space.
Welsch: It sounds exciting. We'll have to take it. And one other question that I asked you just a little earlier. You've done so many different styles of music. You've done so many different types of things. You know, everything from opera to what you're doing here with a film. There's I would imagine there's no way to say, well, this particular piece of music epitomizes what Philip Glass does.
Glass: I play and I write, so that's already a lot. But, one of the things with the ensemble was just a wonderful ensemble. They've been together a long time, but even as much as I love the ensemble, I also like to play the piano. And playing one of the most exciting things is just doing. I just did a little concert two days ago, and I did something with Patti Smith, who has a show here, and I think it's Warhol.
Patti read poetry and I played music with her, and I love just being in those very intimate situations with music where there's just myself in the piano. In this case, Patti was there, but I also do concerts just by myself. I think that direct communication that that a musician can have and a composer can help with the audiences. It's highlighted in that way.
Welsch: Well, the program tonight features short films that you're going to be playing with. So this is your short films tonight? That's right. And tomorrow night, it's Koyaanisqatsi.
Glass: It's Koyaanisqatsi. It's a real classic. It's really changed the way people looked at the way filmmaking. If you've never seen this, and when you see it, you'll begin to understand why you saw all other images started appearing in films and advertisements. It really came from that modern language of filmmaking came from Koyaanisqatsi.
Welsch: And as you, you spend some time here in Pittsburgh, 1961-1963.
Glass: I was a composer in residence with the Pittsburgh Public Schools. I think it was the Ford Foundation set this up all over the country. There were about 100 places they did it.
I had a great time. I wrote music, I didn't teach, I just wrote music. String quartets, symphonies, a lot of choral music. I'm sure that some people, there are people around here, you know, I was only 24 at the time. I was writing for 10 years younger than me. So those people are in their 50s now, and some of you are out there and you may remember me. I'm here I am again. So if you if you, any of you are there, it'll be fun to come back and say hello.
