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The Australian - Pre-Concert Article The Australian, The Arts Section, Friday January 12, 1996, by Bryce Hallett. MAESTRO OF MINIMALISM CUTS TO THE QUICK He has been called a minimalist, an ingenious conceptualist and the composer of deceptively simple - some say repetitive and monotonous - music. But Philip Glass, 57, is also a refreshingly down to-earth musician who has been deeply serious about music since he picked up a flute at the age of eight. On his fourth visit to Australia - this time as a guest of the Sydney Festival - Glass look understandably weary after his flight from New York but, much like the sprawling, mesmerising pieces he has created, nothing could refrain him from telling tales about his illustrious, idiosyncratic career. During a luncheon in Sydney yesterday, the Baltimore-born composer spoke briefly about the pivotal role of collaboration in contemporary music; the way technology has enriched music theatre and the intimate, raw power of performance itself. With these details in place, Glass sat down to answer questions written down and gathered from the $50-a-head luncheon crowd. Here his easy engagement and loquacious manner truly shone. He cited his mammoth Einstein on the Beach a number of times - a five-hour (no interval) opera performed at the Melbourne Festival in 1992 when one critic likened the experience to "watching grass grow". In his solo piano recital at the Sydney Opera House tonight, however, he will cut to the quick and present several works, one of which has been commissioned by the Sydney Festival. He suggests that such spare and "intimate" occasions - despite the vastness of the halls he now performs in - don't diminish the direct communication he attempts to establish with his audience. "It would be easy to assume that in larger halls intimacy isn't there, but for me it is," he says. "Each time I think of it as playing for every single person [in the audience and this reawakens the essential relationship we have to music ... Maybe I don't need the operas or the technology." With humility and good humour, Glass recounts the times he spent working as a plumber and driving cabs in New York. He substantiates the tale that he was once called to art critic Robert Hughes's Manhattan apartment to repair his washing machine. "I didn't know where I was being sent but it was Bob Hughes, who I knew," he recalls. Although it would appear his plumbing calls and time as a cabbie in New York's traffic-snarled streets gave little time for anything other than minimalist music, Glass says he was caught up with a generation of painters, sculptors and musicians involved in all things minimalist while performing in neighbourhood cafeterias, parks, museums and galleries. A conscientious composer/musician who majored in mathematics and philosophy at university, Glass gradually built an audience but not until after lots of searching, study and the discovery of his "own voice". He believes young composers who are just starting out face considerable hurdles but is adamant they should persist and not lose heart. "The definition of modern music is no longer narrow ... It's so much harder for composers now - in my time it was easy to see who the enemy was." Even in his late 50s, Glass has a nicely rebellious tone as he mentions how "new" music, particularly theatre music, reveals no trace of the issues of the 70s and 80s. "It's very difficult for young people to achieve; to find a voice of their own but it won't be a strategy or an idea that will get them there - it evolves from inside, not the outside." There is a slight pause, as Glass leaves time for his audience to ponder the point. But not for long. More short questions and ruminating, sometimes repetitive (but never monotonous) answers follow. Although he hasn't shaken off the "minimalist" label, Glass himself argues his musical trajectory has gone in much more rich and diverse directions. "I'm a theatre composer, which has the virtue of being simple and truthful," he says. Since Einstein in 1976, the composer has written l1 operas, the latest of which La Belle et la Bete is based on Jean Cocteau's film - a work which might turn up in the 1997 Melbourne Festival, an involvement Glass would welcome. With a keen hunger for collaborative works rather than assuming the life of a solitary composer, Glass likes to put himself in the heart of things - even when confronted by a "lunatic" director. He recalls the time when he wrote the film score for A Brief History of Time, based on Stephen Hawking's best-seller, when the director refused to let him see any footage. "He told me that 'If I send it, you will get the wrong idea' Can you imagine? So he agreed to send one word faxes saying things like 'Black Hole' or 'Time'. It seemed to work somehow ..."