Art of Glass: Creating a new musical language

24 June 2015

A towering figure in contemporary music, Philip Glass's five-decade-and-counting career encompasses Oscar-nominated film scores and experimental operas as well as instrumental music for ensembles of all sizes.

Here Glass, 78, tells BBC Arts about his first exposure to music, when he worked in his father’s record shop in Baltimore, Maryland, and how he managed to sneak into Chicago jazz clubs while underage to hear some of the genre's all-time greats.

He describes how in the 1960s, when he was living in New York (and studying composition at the Julliard School of Music), he wanted to find a new language of music that anyone could understand. He tells how the accessibility of the modern art movement influenced his music, and explains how Music for 12 Parts evolved.

Thanks to Colin Hynd and Svend Brown at Glasgow Life.