Monday evening, October 24, downtown Amsterdam. I naively approach one of the side streets from which you enter the legendary Melkweg (Milky Way), once a milk factory, and for decades a place known as a window that gives an insight into the pop and alternative scenes. The street is crowded, people in a long line are shivering in the cold and chatting in the two hundred meter long "caterpillar". The Amsterdam Dance Event is going on, I assume that some of the "dance" concerts are also nearby or on one of the stages. I make my way to the entrance, which is still closed, and that's when I realize that all those I cold-bloodedly passed are waiting to enter the same concert I went to: Philip Glas and friends. Although I have been following Glas's work for a long time, I am surprised by the crowd. It's a concert of "classical" music after all, or maybe it's not? The audience from the queue is colorful: gray heads, young alternative people, pregnant women, middle-aged couples, a few small children. Nota bene: tickets are not cheap, the price is 50 euros. Philip Glass started out as an avant-garde criminal, and now he's a superstar.
Amsterdam Dance Event included in its six-day program three concerts organized by the "Philip Glas" Center under the label "Philip Glas Day and Night Festival": a solo concert by Lori Anderson The language of the future, a joint evening between Glas and Anderson, and a concert Philip Glas and friends. In the accompanying program, a film by Laurie Anderson was projected A dog's heart (2015). Anderson presented another in a series of projects that follow her exploration of the "American narrative" and how that narrative can be communicated. It seems that the specific criticism of American society is something that united all three events. The program of the "Voice and Friends" concert was constructed in accordance with his star status, but in accordance with the artist's avant-garde past, it also brought new and unexpected moments.
The concert was opened by Dutch DJ Darko Esser - with a tribute to Glas. Glas's widely known repetitions and some of the chord progressions that became his trademark sounded through Esser's techno-romanticism more vocal than the Voice itself. Enriched with echo effects and pleasant noises, Eser Glas sounded like a music therapy class, like relaxation compilations. This was followed by three etudes for piano (Glas' recent works) arranged for harp performed by the excellent Lavinia Meyer. In these arrangements, the harp crossed the threshold of the usual meditative "women's music" traditionally assigned to it. In the hands of Meyer, the harp became a musical machine through the mechanism of which romanticism, but also classicism and sharp minimalism can be heard as needed. It was an unusually charismatic performance, through which the etudes sounded better and more complete than when they are delivered by the piano.
Two completely romantic pieces followed The orchard i Pendulum for violin and piano, where the composer played the piano part. The excellent Tim Fain on the violin, and Glas at the piano ventured to perform populist pieces that, I think, should satisfy the taste of the widest audience. For ears that remember the avant-garde minimalism of the sixties and seventies: hard to listen to. The applause of the majority is deafening, even with Philip's uncertain prelude at the piano. It's as if the music stopped being important, the important thing is that the famous composer is behind the instrument, and that his charisma fills the hall, even through "easy" notes. He followed The Chase for piano four hands (second pianist is Feico Deutekom), a fragment of Voice Opera Les Enfants Terribles. Neoclassical repetitive melancholic music delights the audience. Finally, Tim Fain performs the violin cadenza from the famous Einstein on the beach more virtuoso than ever. The performance was so fast that it was almost impossible to connect the tone and image. Fain's body was almost completely motionless so that every atom of his body was focused on the virtuosic masterpiece he was performing and the quick micron movements of his fingers. Unlike the motionless body, the sound was elusive and unreal, a repetitive shrill machine accelerated to the limit. The effect: the virtuosity brings the audience to their feet, and the depth of the avant-garde approach from 1976 shines with a full brilliance that has the power to overshadow even the harshest critics. I leave for the break beaming.
If the first part of the concert was aimed at the widest circle of Glas consumers, the second part at least confused them. There was no more relaxing music to enjoy. The Voice of the Avant-Garde worked. A new work was presented Whistle Blower with attitudes A memory (Memory), Surveillance (Surveillance), Love (Love) of the Snowden, and based on the poetry of American activist and poet-performer Jerry Quickley. Quickley passionately recited his activist poetry on stage accompanied by an ensemble consisting of a string quartet, piano, percussion and another voice in Snowden (Tara Hugo). Glas's repetitive melancholic-romantic music was in the background and worked perfectly as an accompaniment to the expressive Quickli. The work grew into a specific form of musical theater that combined an expression close to rapping and "classics". Quickley's poetry metaphorically questions the position of America today and the power and powerlessness of its citizens and administration. Voices' music, as the music of capitalist liberalism, supports Quickley's critique. On the other hand, she is a product of a society that is questioning. As such, it seems to have a greater right, but also an obligation, to critically examine the moment in which it is created. And he succeeds in that. However, the audience does not find in this expression the enjoyment for which they came to the concert.
In the footsteps of his avant-garde past, Glas uses the populist part of his work to pose deeper and critical questions in relation to the society in which he creates. He has already practiced working with an engaged poet in his long career. At the end of the eighties, he collaborated with Allen Ginzberg, and the fruit of that collaboration is an opera Hydrogen jukebox whose poetry also questioned the American moment at that time, talking about the sexual revolution, the anti-war initiative, the pollution of the planet... And not by chance, in his inspired declamation, Quickley mentions at some point Allen Ginsberg as an object of information service processing. Time link between Whistle Blower i Hydrogen jukebox becomes obvious. Political aesthetics and the aestheticization of politics are balanced on the scales, and many opportunities for discussion open up. The initiative is nevertheless commendable.
