The Philip Glass Ensemble at Town Hall, performing Music in Twelve Parts. From left to right, Michael Riesman, music director, and conductor; Andrew Sterman, flute, piccolo, saxophone; Sam Sadigursky, flute, soprano sax; Peter Hess, saxophones; Mick Rossi, keyboard and Lisa Bielawa, voice, keyboards.
New York City. Philip Glass premiered “Music in Twelve Parts” at Town Hall in New York City in 1974. It was not just at a different cultural time but in a different country. If it’s hard to imagine what that audience must have made of a four-hour avant-garde piece with no story built on repeated patterns and subtly shifting rhythmic figures, consider The Philip Glass Ensemble’s 50th-anniversary performance at Town Hall on Saturday. The patterns of minimalism might be part of our musical vocabulary now, but the challenges “Music in Twelve Parts” poses to our ways of listening might have become tougher — and perhaps more necessary.
I had been listening to the recording of a live performance by the Ensemble in Rovereto, Italy, in 2006, which featured several of the players in the current group and the composer on keyboards, and then I had the fortune to interview multi-instrumentalist, educator, and Ensemble’s manager Andrew Sterman for my program notes (below). It seemed like a fair preparation.
As it turned out, it was like trying to learn how to swim from a book.
Jazz With an Accent 