Certain “early works” carry a very particular tone. They do not age, and continue to remind us of the surge of energy and radicality that accompanies the invention of a style.

Music in Contrary Motion, Music in Fifths, Music in Similar Motion, Music with Changing Parts:
the four pieces of this concert all date from 1969–1970, a highly fertile period in the composer’s trajectory. They bear traces of a decisive encounter: during his studies in Paris a few years earlier, Philip Glass was engaged as an assistant by the Indian composer and sitar player Ravi Shankar. The latter asked him to transcribe his music into Western notation, a difficult problem that proved revelatory for Glass: “I erased all the bar lines. And suddenly, I saw the flow of the rhythm that I hadn’t seen before.”

It was at this moment that the young artist discovered the potential of music based on the combination of very brief patterns. This technique makes it possible to create a musical flow that is vertiginous and fast like a torrent—both repetitive and unpredictable. Upon his return to New York in 1967, another artistic shock awaited Philip Glass. Sobriety and reduction had become the watchwords of American modern art, championed by visual artists such as Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra, and Donald Judd.

Bl!ndman and Ictus will share their converging approaches to the music of Philip Glass, in search of a transcendental experience that “erases all the bar lines.”