Alan Lockwood’s interesting piece on new music for cellists and includes a discussion of Glass’ "Songs and Poems for Solo Cello":

"Wendy Sutter calls herself “a very traditional classical player,”
versed in Bach, Britten, and Kodaly. “I play new music almost by
default,” Sutter said. “I’d been offered Joan’s position when she
resigned from Kronos but I wanted to have a child at that time.” She
later joined Bang on a Can, and met Glass when he toured with the
ensemble. The composer told her he wanted to write something for her,
“which seemed [at first] too good to be true. I’d go to his house, with
him on the piano—it was an old-fashioned collaboration. We talked about
the piece’s fifth movement being a chaconne or a fugue, something
massive to serve kind of as its heart. Hours later I got an email scan,
two pages of music.” She saw immediately that Songs and Poems for Cello
had coalesced. Sutter said rousing responses have followed the dozen
performances since its February 2007 premiere. Recorded in a Chelsea
church—“like it was live, in about two hours”—it comes out this month
on Orange Mountain Music, with the thirty-five-minute, seven-movement
suite paired with sketches or “tissues” left unused when Yo-Yo Ma
played Glass’s Naqoyqatsi film score. Sutter and percussionist
David Cossin took up these pieces, which the cellist called “gorgeous,
crystalline—sort of like Schubert.”…..(for full article click here)