[Baltimore, MD?] Phillip Glass is
probably the only composer I am aware outside of Angelo Badalamenti (David
Lynch’s man). He does a lot of film scores, but they’re not the sort of film
scores that are only suitable for background music. (I think I came to him
through the movie The Thin Blue Line.) I find his music entrancing – it makes
me think of alien landscapes – big vast empty spaces – uncomfortable things
that are comforting, at least to me. Eerie and heartbreaking, but ultimately
soothing. Anyway, I developed a picture of him in my head as a sort of
underground avant garde genius, but it seems he’s more of a very well established widely traveled snooty
sort of guy (at least at this very aged point in his life, and from his
tortured old guy artist photo on the brochure I got). Seeing him in Houston’s version
of artsy (lots of money) might also contribute to my new impressions of him. This
is how it happened. I was pretty shocked to see that Phillip Glass was giving a
FREE public concert at a local art museum, The Menil Collection. So I tracked
the tickets online, signed up to get a free one within the first moments they
were available, and they were already sold out. Free my ass. They were free to
paying members of The Menil Collection, I’m guessing. I gathered my spirits,
and decided The Menil people are ultimately good people and they probably meant
free to the public in the sense that if you’re desperate enough you can sit in
the park next to the tent where he’s playing and hear a slightly distant
version of the concert. So I packed my sunhat, my pink bag, my pink chair, and
hiked over there. Much to my dismay, this was no casual affair. A massive tent
with very loud portable ACs attached at multiple points around the perimeter.
Shuttle buses from some parking lot to the tent. Cops manning the crosswalks
(which is nothing notable in Houston’s pretty neighborhoods) and “Menil guards”
milling about, looking menacing, to me. I stepped to the side, stood under a
tree, and starting eating my naive picnic lunch, assessing the situation. It
looked grim. Ten minutes pass – the doormen are yelling at people on the lawn
near me to take their seats before the show starts. It’s all very intense and
exciting. Then things start to get sloppy, I see people walking in without any
verification that they have a ticket! I gather my sunhat, chair, and picnic
lunch, and take my chances. I waltzed through the door like nobody’s business,
and secured an actual seat in the last row. So excited, even if I was seated
next to the riffraff: people with babies and other freeloaders like me (kids
from the neighborhood in inappropriately casual dress). I think they ended up
not filling all the seats, and being ultimately good people, decided to let
some stragglers in. I was about ½ mile away from the stage and, although I
heard the two introductions from men congratulating The Menil Collection and
Houston for this momentous day, the mic stopped working when Phillip Glass took
the stage and I couldn’t hear a word of what he said. It was all piano – I’m
assuming he’s all piano – and they had a screen with a close up on his hands. His
sound was everything I expected, and there was a nifty brochure describing what
he played though he didn’t really break in between ‘songs’ so I never knew
where we were. But he played the songs (‘etudes’) he had created to keep his
fingers limber and then songs that were actually in movies. He’s definitely a
badass. I guess the most surprising thing to me was that his music had always
sounded so minimalistic to me, but the visuals of him playing were anything but
minimalistic: fingers moving at lightning speed (smoothly) and hands
simultaneously going down different paths. After 45 minutes, I got restless –
the seats were the size of ¾ a person. I wasn’t alone – I saw lots of backs
starting to shift. I snuck out early, but very pleased with my Sunday afternoon
adventure. (photo courtesy of
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