"Philip Glass takes on Leonard Cohen. Big mistake"
- SF Chronicle
Book of Longing
PHILIP GLASS, composer
LEONARD COHEN, poet
An evening-length work of poetry, music and image based on Leonards book of 2006.
Humorous self parody, romantic longing, spiritual striving - a sampling of Cohen's poems that touch on romance, biography, balladry, the dharma, limericks and rhymes.
"I wanted the experience of listening to the piece to be similar to what happens when you look through a book of poems but you don't look at it sequentially," he says. "It's a random kind of thing but in the course of time you actually encounter all the different aspects of the piece."
Cohen was once asked, “is the music cabaret, theatrical, or classical?”
He responded “Glassical.”
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Scored for 8 musicians, 4 singers and an actor, the work was co-commissioned by a number of art festivals and the University of Texas. Underwriters included the Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity, Toronto; The Barbican Centre, London; Lincoln Center Festival, New York; Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff; Stanford Lively Arts, Stanford University.