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A last musician's spamming
Aug. 9th, 2009 12:53 amI've been on LJ a lot today; just grateful it's working.
Self-disclosure: I was a music major at my Alma Mater; not because I thought I'd be a musician in real life for the rest of my life, but because it was easy to me. I couldn't major in choral music as a musician, so I majored in Music History/Theory. That said, I took a History of Music course my freshman year (fall 1988) and we had cassette tapes (yes) to listen to centuries of music. And in that was included an excerpt from Koyaanisqatsi, and I was hooked. I fell in love with Philip Glass' music, much to the chagrin of my roommate (now an accomplished artist in Charleston, South Carolina [Honor Marks]), and by the time of my senior year when I was a Music Major (Russian [very] minor), there was at least one other in our group of six or so who had derisively nicknamed me Phyllis Glass. I love minimalism. The only opera I've actually bought on CD is "Nixon in China." But I've spent much of this weekend watching Glass: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts, and I've found myself in tears more than once. He gets up each day and works. He works on hearing the music that's there, and then puts it out to the rest of us. He has the kind of discipline that I suppose I try to subconsciously put on myself. Toward the end of the film, he talks about a friend of his who's a writer.
"He makes the core of his life an act of imagination. Is that an escape or liberation? Who am I to say? I don't know these things!"
I adored the film, the documentary, about someone who transformed my perception of music, though it alienated me from my then-roommate. I wasn't allowed to play Philip Glass while she was in the room, and she didn't play more country-fied things. I wasn't very sophisticated, I must say. But I love Glass, the shimmering manipulations of meter and tonal change, and that I was able to sing a piece back in Nashville that had a Leonard Cohen text and Glass setting, and that Portland Opera is producing Orphée in November and Mr. Glass should be coming to town. Whether he does or not, I'll be raptly watching each of the four performances of the opera, and I can't wait. And not just because I've seen him four or five times before, all in Nashville.
There'll be motorcycles on stage. :)
Self-disclosure: I was a music major at my Alma Mater; not because I thought I'd be a musician in real life for the rest of my life, but because it was easy to me. I couldn't major in choral music as a musician, so I majored in Music History/Theory. That said, I took a History of Music course my freshman year (fall 1988) and we had cassette tapes (yes) to listen to centuries of music. And in that was included an excerpt from Koyaanisqatsi, and I was hooked. I fell in love with Philip Glass' music, much to the chagrin of my roommate (now an accomplished artist in Charleston, South Carolina [Honor Marks]), and by the time of my senior year when I was a Music Major (Russian [very] minor), there was at least one other in our group of six or so who had derisively nicknamed me Phyllis Glass. I love minimalism. The only opera I've actually bought on CD is "Nixon in China." But I've spent much of this weekend watching Glass: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts, and I've found myself in tears more than once. He gets up each day and works. He works on hearing the music that's there, and then puts it out to the rest of us. He has the kind of discipline that I suppose I try to subconsciously put on myself. Toward the end of the film, he talks about a friend of his who's a writer.
"He makes the core of his life an act of imagination. Is that an escape or liberation? Who am I to say? I don't know these things!"
I adored the film, the documentary, about someone who transformed my perception of music, though it alienated me from my then-roommate. I wasn't allowed to play Philip Glass while she was in the room, and she didn't play more country-fied things. I wasn't very sophisticated, I must say. But I love Glass, the shimmering manipulations of meter and tonal change, and that I was able to sing a piece back in Nashville that had a Leonard Cohen text and Glass setting, and that Portland Opera is producing Orphée in November and Mr. Glass should be coming to town. Whether he does or not, I'll be raptly watching each of the four performances of the opera, and I can't wait. And not just because I've seen him four or five times before, all in Nashville.
There'll be motorcycles on stage. :)