Minimalisn’t: Philip Glass in 2025’s Context

While Philip Glass’s name is the first that comes to mind for many people when you say the word “minimalism,” in fact his Songs and Poems, newly transcribed for Solo Viola by Christine Rutledge, contain grand gestures and a lot of big feelings. I recorded these works in Mérida, Mexico, in December 2023, and performed them around the world (Mexico, the US, the UK, Italy) this season, in a program pairing them with music for solo viola by 4 contemporary American women and nonbinary composers— Emily Koh, Jessie Montgomery, Caroline Shaw and Mazz Swift. I enjoyed exploring the ways Glass’s music influenced- or, in one case, repelled!- each of them, both in correspondence with the composers, all of whom I’m lucky to call friends, and in the way their notes juxtaposed with those by Glass’s. To play Glass’s music requires a commitment to every single note: so often there are repetitions, therefore if you don’t find a variety of colors and textures, it can be very boring. His Songs and Poems revolutionized my playing in terms of my attention to left-hand details and right-hand sound-producing variation. Rutledge’s transcription of these pieces from the original for cello provides a valuable addition to the solo viola repertoire: a work by one of the most important minimalist composers that utilizes the widest possible range of the viola.

Program:
Songs and Poems— Philip Glass (1937– ), arr. Christine Rutledge
(mega)byte (2020)— Emily Koh (1986– )
Rhapsody #2 (2020)– Jessie Montgomery (1981– )
Invisible, for Trayvon Martin and His Family (2012)— Mazz Swift (1975– )

Presenter:
Ameila Hollander Ames