Philip Glass arrives in town this Friday to appear as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, but he’s no stranger to the city. He first came here in 1952 to begin his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago at the prodigious age of 15. He remembers sitting outside jazz clubs like the Beehive in Hyde Park, too young to be admitted, listening to bebop waft out the door.
Philip Glass & Third Coast Percussion Part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Fri 11/9, 7 PM, Diane and David B. Heller Auditorium, Francis W. Parker School, 330 W. Webster, sold out, all-ages
It’s incredible that a commission like this didn’t happen sooner. Modern classical percussionists are raised on minimalism, in part because minimalist composer Steve Reich (a Glass contemporary and himself a percussionist) has written so extensively for percussion ensemble. Third Coast won a Grammy last year for their album Steve Reich, which collects works ranging from 1973’s Music for Pieces of Wood to 2009’s Mallet Quartet.
In 1967, after returning from studies in Europe, Glass attended a New York concert of Reich’s Four Pianos (an early version of Piano Phase). The two composers had met in the late 1950s as fellow Juilliard students, and after this concert they began collaborating regularly. Along with composer-flutist Jon Gibson, they convened for weekly sessions with an idiosyncratic, cloak-and-helmet-wearing composer, poet, and theorist who called himself Moondog (aka Louis T. Hardin, who was then living with Glass). This group played Moondog’s music exclusively, and they recorded some of the sessions, usually with instrumentation of flute, shakers, and voice. A selection of these recordings was released in 2007 to accompany Robert Scotto’s biography Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue.
Nonetheless Glass and Reich continued collaborating, even gaining some steam—they toured France, Germany, and England together in early 1971, sharing various personnel, including Gibson, Arthur Murphy, and Richard Landry. When asked in the mid-1970s what drew this group together, Glass responded, “I think an interest in the work and an interest in each other.” As musicologist David Chapman has shown in his lengthy study of the history and membership of the Philip Glass Ensemble, much early minimalist music grew out of this mixture of collaboration, friendship, and mutual support.
This collaborative style has become a hallmark of Third Coast’s creative process. They’re not only an unusually close-knit group (they write music collectively, such as this year’s program-length composition Paddle to the Sea) but also tend to work hands-on with the composers they commission. For example, they ask each participant in their Emerging Composers Partnership to attend at least three workshop sessions at the ensemble’s Ravenswood studio. Due to Glass’s busy schedule, though, much of their collaboration happened via phone or Skype.
