Published in this week’s New Yorker, Alex Ross’ portrait of Philip Glass in his 70th Year. For those unfamiliar, Alex Ross writes an incredibly fascinating blog www.therestisnoise.com and has recently published a book
of the same name about listening to the 20th Century which may be the
best book of its kind. In my estimation, he is the standard by which
excellence in musical criticism is measured.
"Philip Glass is without a doubt America’s most famous living composer of classical music. In fact, he may be America’s only
famous living composer of classical music—the single one who would draw
nods of recognition (or irritation) if you were to start waving
eight-by-ten glossies of modern-music masters at passersby in Times
Square. His Hollywood film scores, his collaborations with pop stars
such as David Bowie and Linda Ronstadt, his ubiquity as a purveyor of
motorized musical melancholy, all have placed him at an altitude of
celebrity that eludes even the loftiest of his colleagues—Steve Reich,
John Adams, Elliott Carter, and the rest.
Yet Glass’s seventieth
birthday, which fell on January 31st of this year…."(read the rest of Alex Ross’ article here at newyorker.com)