UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Philip Glass and the Poets on Sunday, May 17, at 7 p.m. at Campbell Hall. In this episode of Air Time, host Charles Donelan speaks with composer and pianist Timo Andres, performer and writer Taylor Mac, and Pomegranate Arts Executive Producer Linda Brumbach about the collaborative spirit behind this one-of-a-kind event, which brings together the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen, Rumi, and others with the music and artistic legacy of Philip Glass.
Part concert, part reading, and, as Taylor Mac describes it, “part séance,” Philip Glass and the Poets emerges in the conversation as something more fluid and communal than a conventional touring production. Brumbach reflects on decades of collaboration with Glass and recalls the intimate evenings Glass created with Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Laurie Anderson, while Andres discusses Glass’s uniquely collaborative approach to composition and performance. The discussion ranges from downtown New York experimental culture and the economics of artistic survival to the enduring power of poetry, ritual, and live performance to create community across generations.
Charles Donelan
Welcome everyone to Air Time, the podcast of UCSB Arts & Lectures. We are talking today with Timo Andres, Taylor Mac, and Linda Brumbach, and they are part of the team that is bringing Philip Glass and the Poets to Arts & Lectures and to UCSB’s Campbell Hall on Sunday, May 17, at 7 p.m. Welcome to the three of you. Thank you for taking the time to do this. And I think this one I’m going to start in an absolutely open way, because I feel like that kind of suits what this is. What kind of an event is Philip Glass and the Poets? Is it a concert? Is it a reading? Is it a performance?
Taylor Mac
I’ve sort of been describing it to friends as part concert, part reading, part séance. I don’t know exactly. This is the first time we’ve ever done it, so I’m not sure exactly what will occur,
Charles Donelan
I like that it’s part séance. We don’t have enough of those. Go ahead. It’s also…
Linda Brumbach
It’s also a ritual in a way, because Philip and Allen Ginsberg would do these together, and then I saw Patti Smith do it with Philip. And so it’s a ritual that’s being passed down, you know, to us to keep this séance going.
Charles Donelan
So there’s a connection here. And maybe Linda, you could help us understand this even better. You referred to specific events in the past that involved Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, and, of course, Phil Glass.
Linda Brumbach
Yeah, I’m happy to. When Celeste Billeci called me and said she was stepping down after 25 years, she wanted to do something really special together to honor that history, and particularly the history with Philip over the years. I mean, the partnership we’ve had with Arts & Lectures at Pomegranate has been very, very deep. We’ve produced 22 shows over the last 22 years, and I think about nine of them were Philip in the very beginning, when we started with his Philip on Film and Shorts, but in my history with Philip, one of the really extraordinary, beautiful, intimate evenings were always his relationship with the poets, particularly with his dear friend Allen Ginsberg.
I used to tour with Philip and Allen. We kind of called it “the buddy show,” where Philip would play piano and Allen would recite his poetry. And it was really interesting to think about the interconnections of all of these people. When Celesta called me about doing an evening of the relationship with Lucinda Childs both to Arts & Lectures, and with Philip and Einstein On the Beach, with Taylor, and 24 Decades in 2016 and Taylor’s connection and history and lineage with Walt Whitman and Allen, thinking about the the first show we did after Allen died, and we continued this legacy of Philip performing the poems. And I think the first one we did was with Patty in Santa Barbara. It was 2009, and I think we called it A Footnote to Howl, where Patti would perform “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” and then some of her own work, and her own inspirations, which were around William Blake, and then Philip would do some with Laurie Anderson, also at the core of the evening “Wichita Vortex” with Laurie’s work. And then some of her inspirations, like Lou Reed coming in as the voice of God and connecting Timo, this is the first time we’ve actually done this poetry evening, or reflections around the poets and how Philip would always talk about the currency of poets, of the poets in our world, and our relationship to everyday language, and why poetry is such high art, but Timo is this the first time we’ve done it without Philip playing piano,
Charles Donelan
Right.
Linda Brumbach
It was very important to find the sort of essence and depth of that compositional voice, the relationship with Philip, the deep understanding of his work. And I just couldn’t think of anyone better than Timo Andres, who, besides being such a brilliant composer, has been on this journey with us, with Philip for a long time on the Etudes project, and has been a deep collaborator. And Taylor has been in our world for so long. I was really thinking about who could contribute as a writer and someone in the lineage of Allen, and someone who could actually recite Allen musically, and understand the timbre and rhythm. So they all have something deeply connected to each other, whether they know it or not. I think to Santa Barbara, to Philip, to all of us this felt like a really beautiful gathering of people. Also bringing in the women of the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus, young women as interpreters of Ginsberg. There are also connections to Lucinda and Valerie. We can talk about that later.
Charles Donelan
Well, thank you, Linda, and you know, you did a wonderful job. I was going to ask each of you individually to situate yourselves in the project of Philip Glass and the Poets, but I think you kind of accomplished that there, although I do want to hear from Timo and from Taylor. Timo, I watched the wonderful live stream [of the complete Philip Glass Etudes] from Michigan a few weeks ago, which was fantastic, but give me just a brief precis of your engagement with Philip Glass. I know that’s a tall order in a short space, but I know you can do it.
Timo Andres
It’s interesting, because, of course, Philip’s music was a huge influence on me before it became part of my life as a performer. And I actually had not performed Philip’s music prior to 2013. Thirteen years ago was my first performance of the Etudes at the Barbican in London, and they’ve been sort of a constant in my life ever since. They really have. Just like year after year, we find some way to bring them out. And I’ve learned almost all 20 of them at this point, or performed almost all 20 of them and helped with the new edition, of course, a few years ago, and, you know, branched out, of course, into other pieces of Philip’s. And now, sometimes I’m subbing with the Philip Glass Ensemble, which is a whole other sort of angle on his performance practice.
But, you know, I think it’s very interesting that this Philip Glass and the Poets show is yet another angle, because I think it’s so important to remember that Philip’s music really comes out of a theatrical impulse, and it comes out of a collaborative impulse, and the willingness and the the sort of flexibility of him as a composer is something that I think is so important, and something we could all kind of take an example from: the fact that he was so able to adapt his music to these kind of nontraditional uses where, you know, some modern composers might say, “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly have poetry being read alongside my music. It doesn’t work.” Or, you know, we sometimes get in our own heads about it a little bit. I think Philip was, his attitude has always been, “These people hear something in my music. Let me make it work in this new context. And actually, let’s build something new with my music.” And that’s something that I’ve tried as best I can to emulate in my own life as a composer.
Charles Donelan
Now I want to, I want to follow up on this, but I also want to say, right now, Taylor, I’m coming for you over Allen Ginsberg and poetry more generally, in just a moment. But you know, I was rereading Philip’s memoir, Words Without Music, over the weekend, and revisiting the early period, you know, where he says things like, “Richard Serra was really struggling financially.” I was a New Yorker from 1982 when I moved there, and I lived there until 2001, and for me, I was like, when was Richard Serra struggling financially? It was before I got there.
But what I was struck by this time through the memoir was how often decisions were made and choices arose out of practical necessity. You know, playing Music in Twelve Parts in the 10 Bleecker Street loft space was an aesthetic choice, but it was also all they had. They weren’t being invited to play in concert halls at that point. And the connection I want to make here is between you [Allen Ginsberg performing] Howl at the Gallery Six, right, or some of these early Philip Glass Ensemble concerts that were also held in gallery and museum spaces, because those were his friends. That was what he had access to.
And I guess this is for everyone, but I know Linda especially is going to have something to say about what. What is it about this tradition, if you want to call it that, that has to do with operating, not necessarily against institutions, but almost in a kind of pre-institutional setting, like before the presenting organizations that came into play eventually really existed? Before Pomegranate, people just kind of made things up as they went along. Linda, do you want to talk about that? Maybe that’s still happening.
Linda Brumbach
It is absolutely still happening. And I think it circles back, you know, it’s us. A lot of you know the early work of Lucinda Childs in the Judson Church, and Philip, who was performing, yes, in loft spaces. But if you remember, also in museums. The visual art world was definitely inviting more experimental artists into their spaces, and then that shifted a bit in the landscape. And now it’s circling back again. You know, when you look at the visual art world and how those performing art structures are coming back into play now, I think it’s a little bit of a cycle. And of course, you know, Taylor is someone who can certainly speak about that from his work, because he was not invited into spaces in the beginning. And Taylor, I’m going to kick it over to you, because it’s sort of interesting in your lens now. You had to create your own ways of being in the world to do your art, to do your work in a similar way than Philip did with friends and clubs and places to just make it happen. Just the way Laurie Anderson did, the way Philip did, the way Tim was done, the way you’re doing. I’m kicking it over to you, Taylor.
Taylor Mac
Well, you know that you just make do. I did one of my early shows, so it was just me and a suitcase, and and I could just do it anywhere. I toured the U.K., and I think I ended up performing it on two different sets of The Glass Menagerie, you know, just my little solo show, like that. I was always in front of a curtain or in a tent or in a gallery space or in a music hall or an opera house or in an amphitheater or whatever, or just on the street. So it’s always kind of the old tradition of performing, and so much of it is about community. And so you go where the community is, and wherever you can infiltrate is usually where the community is already infiltrated.
Linda Brumbach
One thing I want to say about the community is I think it’s so important. And I know Timo, I’m just aware of like, what’s come when you gather people and you gather artists together, the unexpected, the unknowns that come out of that space. And that has been a really important part of Philip’s work, of course, in his early days, as you know, Timo brought up with Mabou Mines and like always being a collaborator in different genres and different spaces, but in the journey that will go on much longer than I’m in the room. But the years that I was able to be in the room with Philip, it has been really beautiful to see when these communities gather like I do.
I remember the first time. It was actually like the second year. Philip and I had just met in 1987 and in 1988 that was the first event show that I was able to do with Philip, and he and Allen [Ginsberg] had just met.
And the event was, there was a guy named Tom Bird who had created, he was a Vietnam vet and a playwright, and he had created this theater company, Vetco, a veteran’s ensemble theater company. And we were doing a benefit at the Shubert Theater in 1988 and and my dear friend Hal Wilner was invited to come in and curate both poets in New York and letters from people, but, you know, in Vietnam, who had written letters home, and they didn’t make it back, and they wanted to add music to this text, to the writing of these letters, and Philip and Allen were asked to do something together.
It was the first time they had collaborated together, and Allen had written “Wichita Vortex Sutra” in 1966. This event was in 1988. Philip created the music, which premiered that evening for one night only at this event, and that experience of community and collaboration and just playing around with each other led to a major collaboration of Philip and Allen called Hydrogen Jukebox, which was, you know, a beautiful, full evening Chamber Opera that premiered at Spoleto years later. But it was just that gathering of friends and community and these opportunities that exist in these artistic spaces that you don’t always know what they’re going to lead to, where they’re going to go. And that was massive, you know, the seed of the beginning of that friendship, relationship, and collaboration with Philip and Allen.
Taylor Mac
It’s also a little bit what we’re talking about is hybrid work and how industry capitalism likes to compartmentalize everything and give it a nice little brand or label. But many artists aren’t really like that. We like to perform our Etude in the punk club, and our weird performance art in the classical recital hall. So we artists tend to blend all over the place. And I think that’s part of the excitement of where this art comes from. It’s a very hybrid community, where there’s an almost variety show tradition of gathering everybody for the Rolling Thunder review, and everyone’s together in a party or a loft or something, and sharing it that way.
Timo Andres
The other thing I want to add to that, Taylor, is I think the time and the place and the venue that the work gets made and presented also dictates the form of the work in a way. I think back to those early loft pieces of Philip’s, along with so many other artists of his generation in downtown New York. And I kind of think about just the amount of time that artists would have had to devote to making that work together in those spaces. And, you know, spending day after day putting together a piece like Music in Twelve Parts that I worry now in our current world that is just economically impossible. I often feel like, especially young artists now, we’re forced to make these much more encapsulated works that are maybe putting a certain kind of practicality ahead of the grand experimentation. And thinking about that, and thinking about carrying the tradition of Philip’s music forward, I think it’s a lesson we could all learn from that.
Linda Brumbach
Yeah, and I think Philip was great, I would say that Philip was just so inspirational in terms of having both. He was the great experimental artist, but he also was very practical in terms of when he wanted his music to go out in the world, like, for instance, even as an example, you know, with Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi. Originally, when he was composing those works, there was the ensemble, but there was the Western Wind Ensemble. There was a huge Powaqqatsi children’s choir, and it was done so he could tour with the core group of the ensemble, and then the keyboard. A lot of those parts were in the early days. But it wasn’t until, you know, a decade ago, that we were able to do those works with full orchestra and full choir at the L.A. Philharmonic, or the Bergen Philharmonic, because it took building up and building up and building up.
And he was very practical about making decisions when he wanted work to get out there, just like you know, Taylor your, you know, 24 Decade show that was 200 people involved for 24 hours, like what we did in Santa Barbara was an abridged two-hour show, so that the essence of that work could be shared with an audience in a more practical way. So we do have to think that way to survive, I think, and to keep things sustainable. And I would say, with Lucinda — I’m going to bring Lucinda Childs into the room. You know, Lucinda and Philip worked together for the first time with Einstein on the Beach. And you know, Lucinda’s work as a choreographer was done in complete silence. She had never actually worked with a composer before, so it wasn’t until being in that room with Einstein that she connected to Philip’s methodology, Philip’s music, Philip’s rhythmic structures. And that led to the collaboration with soloists, and Philip and Dance that also came to Santa Barbara in 2011, but that relationship and that collaboration grew. She was a choreographer who never worked with composers. Everything was in silence until that moment in the loft space, and that was a practical piece – we never toured that live with the Philip Glass Ensemble. It was recorded because we couldn’t afford to do it live.
Timo Andres
Those are great points for sure. And I do think that we always have to balance those aspects of practicality and experimentation as artists. And part of what I feel that my role in this show sort of is, is at times being a piano soloist, and at times being an improvising, underscoring pianist, and at times trying to imitate the sound of the Philip Glass Ensemble, or the Philip Glass Ensemble plus, with some of these arrangements that I’ve made, so you get sort of a big sampling of the different voices,
Charles Donelan
Thinking about Einstein on the Beach, and what an incredible watershed cultural event that was, and then some of the work that’s been done since then that you’ve been involved in, even the Etudes project, but I think Taylor, you’re the one to maybe talk about people’s attention spans seem to be growing shorter. Everything’s very fragmented. What is it like to involve people in something where duration is such an overarching factor, maybe you could tell us how that works.
Taylor Mac
I don’t think you have to work too hard at it, because people engage in durational activities all the time, and entertainment all the time. Going to a baseball game is a durational experience. You know, it’s like driving there, being there, getting to your seat, hanging out, you know, all the innings. It could go on a lot longer than you planned, or a lot shorter than you planned. So people are used to these types of things. Weddings go on for five hours at least, like in terms of the reception and the ceremony and all of this stuff.
So we’re used to this in our lives, and I’m not quite sure it’s about attention span, as much as it’s about making the decision of what your intention is. And so if your intention is communicating a specific idea, then that happens. And if your intention is look at me, look at me, look at me, then you get bored. An audience will get bored. And if your intention is to create a sacred space, then that’s what happens. So it really is about the artists and their intention of what they’re doing. And I always think of Nina Simone hovering at the piano, waiting for the audience to quiet down. And she would say she wouldn’t play unless they were totally with her before she’d play a single note, and sometimes they wouldn’t quiet down, and she’d say, well, I’m not playing tonight. And she’d leave. So that’s the intention, and that’s art that’s really alive — that kind of choice. So they paid attention at that moment when she left,
Charles Donelan
That’s an interesting form of engaging the audience. Taylor, I want to continue with you, because I want to come back to what I promised I would. Tell me about Allen Ginsberg. Is he somebody that you have lived with and thought about for a long time? How do you bring him into your world?
Taylor Mac
You don’t grow up queer in America, and I don’t mean just queer, you know? You don’t grow up an outsider in America without knowing about Allen Ginsberg, and he’s mythical to us and and partially because of his erotic glee. I think eroticism has so much shame and oppression and privacy attached to it, and it’s dismissed. And he just went all in with it. He said no shame. And he connected it to nature in a way that our modern society is so afraid of. The natural world! Our modern religions are so afraid of the natural world. And so he really just connected it to who we are as human beings, and our messy, fleshy bodies, and that’s liberating when you’re living in a world that says nature, the natural way, is wrong, and somebody, this incredible poet, is saying, “No, it is the natural way,” you know, with his bright energy. And then America, whether they debated him or not, or were offended by him or not, they embraced him as an American figure. And so that as a queer, as an outsider, is completely right. “Oh, wait, I belong here, too.” And so I think, yes, of course, he’s mythic.
Charles Donelan
Timo, when you’re playing and someone is reciting, does that require a different kind of listening, than say, when you’re accompanying someone who’s playing another instrument or singing? What have you learned from working in this manner, which involves working with people reciting poetry?
Timo Andres
I would say it’s more similar to playing with a singer. The introduction of words into music, to me, is like almost a different art form as opposed to when it doesn’t. And I think the main difference with recitation, and particularly with something like Ginsberg’s work, is just the quantity of words and the sort of the heights of the expressivity of the words. There’s something very extreme about it. And it’s interesting to me, because one thinks of Philip’s music on a certain level as being somewhat restrained, that there’s a kind of transparency to it. The dynamic compass that he uses in his scores is somewhat small, and it does make me kind of think that actually one needs to bring out the extremity in this music a little bit. There is a sort of ping-ponging back and forth of abstract and literal meanings between the words that are being spoken and the music that I’m playing.
And of course, I think I play this music differently every time I perform it, to a certain extent, even when I’m alone. But I think particularly when there is this other track going simultaneously, I feel that it’s a necessity to respond in real time and actually to do things interpretationally that I might not do if it were just a solo performance because there are things that make sense in musical structure terms that I always try to bring out, that are not the primary interest when you have something like “Wichita Vortex Sutra” being recited at the same time. It’s like, Okay, forget about these details of abstract musical structure. This is really raw and immediate. So I think I end up playing in a quite different way,
Charles Donelan
Absolutely. I came to talk to you here in this studio at the library at UCSB from our office where we had our production meeting this morning. And the production staff are still kind of astonished that this thing is going to be something of a one off, or that it’s not like almost everything else we do, which is a fixed touring program that has multiple stops and is basically the same from one night to the next. Is that accurate? Maybe Linda is the best person to answer, but I’d love to hear from everyone about this. I mean, it’s being actively shaped through collaboration. It’s not arriving as a fixed touring production. It’s intentional that way. That’s what I tried to make sure everybody understood. But am I getting that right?
Linda Brumbach
You are right, and part of that was having the invitation, which we rarely do, let’s be real. Rarely does a presenter call you up and say, I really want to do something special and unique and honor the history and be open to what this can be. I wanted to do something that was of the essence, and sort of reminded me of the intimacy and the essence of how Philip would put these evenings together with Allen, or with Patti or with Laurie. And they were never the same twice, ever.
It was beautiful to kind of have them land, to have them discover, have them explore. And I was excited about the idea of seeing what would happen with Timo and Taylor and Lucinda, and bringing these beautiful young girls in to interpret “Father Death Blues,” and also the other poets that had such a beautiful history with Philip with Rumi through “Monsters of Grace,” and Leonard Cohen with Book of Longing. And, of course, the great Christopher Knowles from Einstein on the Beach,
Charles Donelan
And Taylor Mac.
Linda Brumbach
And Taylor Mac, yes. And we know this will never happen again the way we’re doing it, will it? Our friends at Stanford heard that we were doing this and they wanted to get on the bandwagon. So we’re looking at doing a little bit of a different version, sure, but who knows? You never know sometimes what the tail of something is when you just start
Charles Donelan
To me, this really feels special because I came of age in New York of the 1980s and I guess the word “downtown” has a certain resonance and meaning for me from that period that I don’t necessarily think about all the time anymore. But looking back, especially rereading Philip’s wonderful memoir, and then looking forward to this program, it made me feel something really powerful. It’s a connection that’s worth savoring and still thinking about in a serious way. Taylor, you called it hybrid work, but maybe you could say a little bit more about the community aspect of the way that you folks collaborate.
Taylor Mac
Well Linda is the person who brought us all together. Pomegranate Arts is the connector, but also the great spirit of the hang. I think artists like to hang out together. And they hang out with the artists who have passed. So they like them in the room with them. They like to hang out with the ideas and the forms and the styles and the techniques, and they like to hang out with the audience. And so when you make spontaneous work, work that hasn’t been what they call in the industry “frozen,” so that it’s exactly the same way night after night, when you make work that has that flexibility in it, then you’re allowing spontaneity in the moment, but you’re also allowing the hang in the audience. So instead of the audience coming to be satisfied with their purchase, they’re coming to experience something that only they will experience on this evening with these people. So it’s just a different way of thinking about it, and it’s a different invitation. And that’s the core when people talk about downtown work, what they really mean is a lot of artists hanging out together and creating movements.
Charles Donelan
And maybe we can finish up by having each of you say something about what you would like the audience to take away from this show. Or maybe they don’t even have to take it away. Maybe they can just have it there. But say what the experience is that you’re hoping that people can have in this Philip Glass and the Poets event.
Timo Andres
Well, one of my soap boxes that I like to get on is, I like to do what I can to break down people’s perception of categorization and genre and these boxes that art is often sold to us in, and just try to get people thinking of the associations between different art forms and the associations of different personalities within a community. I feel that so strongly in all of this work that there’s a kind of yes, as you said, Taylor, about the sense of the great hang. These people found each other because they were living in the same neighborhoods or working outside of institutions and thinking about similar things. In the case of Philip and Lucinda, they said, why don’t we link up and try something? And that kind of collaborative ethos doesn’t happen if you’re thinking with those blinders on that art is often sold to us with. So I would like to think that an audience goes away from this with a sense that the boundaries are blurry, or not even there; that these currents of thought and aesthetic and form run through it all freely,
Charles Donelan
And Linda, you do so much to create a space within which these types of things can happen, right? That is partly your role, to open things up to a kind of instability that might not be available through other non-Pomegranate organizations.
Linda Brumbach
I don’t know. I fall in love with artists and, you know, I love that beginning moment. I always have. I always loved the moment when Spaulding Gray sat down at a table with a glass of water for the first time and told a story, and it wasn’t fully shaped. He didn’t totally know where he was going. We didn’t have it perfectly for this one. There’s so much, I mean, obviously, there’s a lot of love and gravitas and who’s in the room, and a lot of love for the work. But also for me, just personally, I think being able to have the audience share a moment with this particular group of artists, getting to play together in a way that hasn’t happened before, is really meaningful to me. And of course, this poetry is beautiful. There are portraits of America. There’s countercultural depth, but there’s also deep fun and playfulness in the work. And I just love, everyone on the stage in this one, and even for myself, to know that things are going to happen that I will be seeing for the first time. I love that energy. I don’t feel like we get it enough now
Charles Donelan
I agree. Well, thank you all so much. We look forward to seeing you on Sunday, May 17, at Campbell Hall with Lucinda Childs and the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus. Taylor Mac, Timo Andres, and Linda Brumbach have been my guests today. Thank you for your time, and we are so excited to see you on Sunday.
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