Philip Glass is Helping Where Dairy Queen Maybe Didn't So Much
“Must be able to work in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment.”
- Dairy Queen job listing
I know what you’re thinking, “must be able to work in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment,” from your application to the Dairy Queen back in the day. Me too. Had no idea how much that job would prepare me for today. Or maybe...
It was only a month ago that I was telling you that the only album that could console me was Arvo Pärt’s “Sanctuary.” Then a couple weeks later I shared about listening nonstop for a few days to his “My Heart’s in the Highlands” set to the Robert Burns poem “My Heart’s in the Highlands” but that’s maybe obvious like the album I found this week which I highly recommend called “Valentina Lisitsa Plays Philip Glass” which features the pianist Valentina Lisitsa, who is known for Rachmoninoff and Listz–I remember watching her play a Listz piano concerto with the Napa Valley Symphony in maybe 1997 or 1998, all 95 pounds of her bringing such power to Lizst’s score–but this album is her playing the music of Philip Glass and her interpretations of the “Metamorphosis” series is stunning! She plays number two with a similar mystic restraint of a slow bossa nova, just enough to keep it alive, making it all the more alive, so good. She also plays quite a few works from Glass’s score to the film “The Hours” which is a haunting score for a film.
The most exciting piece on this album is her recording of “How Now” which I don’t think I’ve ever heard recorded or live. The purpose of these early ensemble works “How Now” and “600 Lines” were, in Glass’s words, “two-fold — First, to extend and develop the music I had begun in 1965 based on repetitive and cyclic structures. Second, when broadening the performance to the ensemble of synthesizers and wind instruments, it was clear that a new performance technique would need to be developed.”
So, essentially, we now have a recording that bookends what we know of Glass’s work–within an album of Glass’s work. I highly recommend the 2 hours and 43 minutes of “Valentina Lisitsa Plays Philip Glass.”
These Things too inspired me recently:
Fuck the Bread. The Bread is Over. - OMG! You have to read this! It’ll take almost 10 minutes and it’s so sincere and beautiful.
Spiders fly using electricity - What!? Yep, looks like they’ve been using concepts that Tesla used back in the day. That’s the second time I’ve used that phrase in this article. Weird. I’m also reading Tesla’s “My Inventions” which is interesting. He doesn’t really let us in a lot.
10 Mistakes New Herb Gardeners Make - I love eating fresh from our yard and figuring how to grow more and more easily but herbs are tricky and I was super excited to run across this article.
If you experience a moment, or some beauty along your day, would you mind sharing it wherever you like to share moments and beauty? Maybe just text it to a friend. I don’t want to sound didactic, it’s just that seeing moments from you, seeing the beauty that is emerging from this turmoil of the old ways that no longer work falling apart, helps me so much remember to stop and listen to the world around me, to see that, evidence or none, we’re all a falling out of a great light.