Phillip Glass: Music in 12 Parts performance

Summary from Barbican website:
Music in 12 Parts, a four-hour music marathon composed for the Philip Glass Ensemble, is both a massive theoretical exercise and a deeply engrossing work of art.

The score is the culmination of Glass' explorations and theories on repetition, and is considered to be a seminal composition that defined minimalistic music in the 20th Century.

Another trip to the Barbican without a ticket. This time I ended up in the 4th row ust off the edge of Glass' keyboard. I had a prime vantage point to witness the human side of Glass' work. I've seen a bunch of his pieces performed live, but at 4 hours, I think a major component of the performance of Music in 12 parts is the durational experience of all participants.

It was amazing to witness Glass lose his formality and get swept deeper and deeper into the rhythms and texture. And to watch all of the performers ride the waves of intense concentration, exhaustion, elation, confusion. Mind you, every performer was an extremely accomplished musician and/or composer in their own right, so the talent was impressive to watch in their commitment and competence.

What I found most interesting is the choice to perform everything live. Glass' music is often seen as being almost inhuman in its mechanical repetition and insistent rhythms. However, there were points last night where the musicians simply couldn't go on and for the first time I saw another side to Glass' compositions - the test of just how far you can remain in a precise regimen before the human needs to break the cycle (usually for breath!) The breaks, occasionally getting lost in the score, etc. were as much a part of the performance at the end. I haven't read about Glass at all, so I don't know if this is anything he's interested in. In this age of looping and pre-recorded playback in concerts, I'd be very surprised by his choice to do this all live if he didn't want those hiccups to appear. Will research this a little bit.

I was reminded about how much I think that Glass' music is like a physical object, rather than just sound. There is so much weight and mass to parts of it.

There are tons of people who will happily sit and listen to this really "high brow" music for 4 hours. Lots of folks even brought picnics for the interval! I needed this reaffirmation because I think I'm mostly interested in the potential of the black box and want to explore abstract performance. I feel like alot of the attitude towards this kind of performance has come from not having a chance to experience it or find a point of access to it. <-- something I need to find back up for aside from personal experience Having all that time in the dark listening to the slow movements of the piece, I had loads of time to come up with some ideas that I want to try try out in performance. I'm finding that most of the ideas that pop into my head these days are more about physical composition - set elements, fabric or costume, sound. It's exciting, but also intimidating because it's going into areas that I will have to seek loads of technical advice on. And on a totally humorous and random note: There were some guys taking a photo together and blocking the aisle at the start of the main interval. I was right behind them when the photo was being snapped, so I made a face at the camera. My partner then told me that one of the guys was Leonard Cohen. I ruined someone's fan "buddy photo" with Leonard Cohen! Heh.