By Jackson Cooper, Staff Writer

Published Apr. 15, 2015

In the darkened recital hall of the School of Music, I sat anxiously waiting for the film to start. Kepler was not my favorite opera in the world, but something that was on my research list for assistant directing Galileo Galilei, one that I never got around to.

Thankfully, my inability to find time for the additional research I needed to do was compensated by the Philip Glass Film Festival, the event I was now watching in the recital hall.

This was the second installment of the festival celebrating the renowned, Oscar-nominated composer and his eventual arrival celebration—think Bye Bye Birdie but for classical musicians—to UNCG for a concert Tuesday night and the university premiere of his opera, Galileo Galilei.

I’m assistant directing Galileo, so naturally, to research, I had to watch and listen to a lot of Philip Glass works.

His minimalist style incorporates melody and harmony together through repetition that eventually leads some people to the point of frustration, was revolutionary in the 1960s when he first came on the music scene.

Since then, it’s been parodied, copied and used as a basis of inspiration for modern American composers and pop singers today. Glass is a classical music rock star.

I’ve been a fan of Glass ever since I accompanied a friend to a screening of the documentary Koyaanisqatsi (pronounced Coy-Ahn-Is-Scaht-si), a dialogue-less series of moving images depicting man’s abduction of the earth’s natural resources and creating civilization from it.  Glass’s hypnotic music pushes the film forward, especially in moments like “The Grid” where images of rush hour traffic are sped up to nauseating speeds to exemplify the hustle and bustle of commuter life.

In prep for working of Galileo, I immersed myself in the Glass world, listening to his new score to the 1931 Dracula movie to watching his 4-hour epic opera Einstein on the Beach. Galileo is a more accessible piece for people who are unfamiliar with Glass, and may think he’s too pretentious. It’s now my favorite opera at the moment because the more I watch it night after night, the better it gets.

Though it was his movie score for “The Hours”—the film Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for about three women across three decades—made a big impact on me.

The music was haunting and poetic; the repetition more hypnotic than frustrating. The overall somber tone of the movie about depression, suicide, and the power of the every day, was complemented to perfection with Glass’s score—perhaps making it more extraordinary than it already is.

Watching Kepler, Glass’s opera about the 17th century revolutionary, I was enthralled by how the composer, the master of repetition, managed to make every piece he wrote similar sounding but with different colors. Kepler sounds fields different than Galileo, which sounds different than Satyagraha, which is different from “The Hours.” How is that?

Perhaps it’s simply the fact that Glass is a master artist. Like any master artist, they have a set style and explored the ways of making it better and more accessible with each work. 

The Film Festival will be showing his works all of this week, check the SMTD website for more information.