Bang On A Can All-Stars: Philip Glass: Glassworks

Across four decades, Bang on a Can has become an indispensable American art institution, not only working as a wellspring of and syndicate for new music but also reinvigorating foundational works of the past. When Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe arrived in New York from Yale in the mid-’80s, the young composers were struck by the way that contemporary classical music felt like a closed system, a few people playing for each other with no hope of sharing it to a wider world. They changed that, beginning with the first Bang on a Can festival in New York in 1987 and extending it in most every direction imaginable for a performing-art organization: a record label, multiple festivals, a program where small donations from patrons pay for audacious commissions, a touring-and-recording band of All-Stars that have spread these sounds to the world’s far-flung places. “They have sustained what may be the most convivial vanguard in modern musical history,” Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker. “The cult of genius has given way to a ritual of collaboration.” This year at Big Ears, Bang on a Can celebrates four decades with major works from three of its founders and three legendary composers.

When Philip Glass released Glassworks in 1982, he was far from the household name he ultimately became, not yet a metonym for modern classical music. He had, of course, made Music in Twelve Parts and Einstein on the Beach, but Koyaanisqatsi was still months from release, the Bowie symphonies and The Hours score a decade or three away. Glass composed and recorded Glassworks, as he once plainly put it, “to introduce my music to a more general audience.” It worked, charting on Billboard for six weeks upon release and helping open doors of mainstream awareness to Glass. It also remains an exquisite and expansive album, with the rapturous piano of “Opening” and “Closing” framing pieces that are ecstatic eruptions (“Floe”) and luxuriant drifts (“Island”). It is a concise and expressive encapsulation of Glass’ greatness, especially his understanding and sense of scale. Glass turns 90 in January 2027; to celebrate his birthday, the Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform a new arrangement of Glassworks by his musical director, Michael Riesman, who also conducted the original sessions.