KEY POINTS:
More than three decades after he unveiled his startling landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, one might think that Philip Glass had run out of surprises.
But the acclaimed American composer appears to be at the peak of his career: still imagining, still writing and still creating new
works.
Glass turned 70 earlier this year, and the Bay Area in California is celebrating with numerous events, including the West Coast premiere of the song cycle Book of Longing (composed to texts by Leonard Cohen, which will also be part of the 2008 International Festival of the Arts programme in Wellington); a performance of Glass piano music presented by Other Minds; and a chamber music performance featuring the composer himself.
The big item on the calendar, though, is Appomattox.
Glass' opera, which features a libretto by Christopher Hampton, depicts the final days of the Civil War.
Conducted by Dennis Russell Davies and directed by Robert Woodruff, the opera makes its world premiere in a San Francisco Opera production tomorrow.
Glass' previous operas have often depicted imagined events, with settings including trains and spaceships (for the record, there was no beach in Einstein).
With Appomattox, the composer casts his gaze back to a pivotal moment in American history, when Confederate general Robert E Lee surrendered to his Union counterpart, Ulysses Grant, at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.
Glass said the event has loomed large in his imagination for years. "The Civil War was a monumental event in our history, one which we are still sorting out and trying to understand," he says. "That, in a way, is why I felt it was so important to do this. The results and the lessons of the Civil War have never been completely digested.
"We're still struggling with it."
The meeting of Grant (sung by Andrew Shore) and Lee (sung by Dwayne Croft) is at the core of the opera and Glass says that everything in Appomattox is drawn from history.
But the Civil War is just the starting place for a larger meditation on race and violence in America; in the second half, the opera comes forward in time to encompass 20th century figures and events.
Glass has always been ahead of his time. In the late '60s, he stepped to the forefront of a new kind of compositional style - spare, shimmering and stripped down, it was unlike anything that audiences were used to hearing in concert halls.
Critics called it minimalism and Glass became one of its leading proponents. During the next few years, he achieved international acclaim, starting the Philip Glass Ensemble, co-founding the Mabou Mines Theatre Company and writing groundbreaking works such as Music in Twelve Parts and a trilogy of operas - Einstein, Satyagraha and Akhnaten.
Since then, Glass has written eight symphonies, numerous concertos, multimedia works such as the Qatsi trilogy, chamber works and more operas (Appomattox is his 22nd). He's also written extensively for film, with scores including Kundun, The Illusionist, Notes on a Scandal and The Fog of War.
Along the way, he's earned a wide, multigenerational following - one that extends far beyond the traditional classical music audience.
Today, Glass says that minimalism never existed - rather, it was a term invented by critics trying to describe music they didn't really understand.
He prefers to call his early style "music with repetitive structures".
In any case, recent years have seen him adopt a different compositional style - no less dense, but perhaps more romantic and openly emotional.
Glass is also excited about the upcoming performances of Book of Longing and his chamber works.
When it's suggested that his collaboration with Leonard Cohen came as a surprise to his fans, the composer just laughs.
"Why should they be surprised?" he says. "Leonard and I are almost the same age, we grew up at the same time in North America, we had so many of the same kinds of experiences. For us, we feel a little surprised that it took so long to get around to something like this."
- NZPA
