Mark Likes Music

Right now, Medici.tv is streaming Philip Glass 's brand new The Perfect American live from Teatro Real in Madrid: Medici.tv keeps the recording up for a while, so if you don't see it tonight, you can come back to it later.

The so-called "crying Indian" ad is the most famous (or infamous) example of a patronizingly essentialist view of American Indians as environmental augurs : I think Koyaanisqatsi is another. The only words you hear in the film are Hopi. Koyaanisqatsi means "life out of balance," and the chorus that is part of Philip Glass 's score intones three tribal sayings that can be interpreted as being warnings about the impact of human actions on the world. It's certainly not mean-spirited but can nonetheless be as limiting and de-humanizing as any cowboy-movie stereotype.

Look what was in my mail today: I'll probably just stay home; I can watch the movie for free on YouTube . By the way, Philip Glass's 75th birthday is coming up on January 31, in case you're wondering why you're seeing so much of his music programmed this season. 

Love it or hate it, Koyaanisqatsi is now available to stream for free on YouTube . The commercial breaks are jarring, but it's a great, free way to get your Philip Glass fix at work (or at home). It's also on Hulu .

In this short promotional video for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Philip Glass talks a little bit about his increasing interest in  the classical-music tradition  as a source of inspiration: This has been going on for a while. Some people love his symphonies, string quartets, and the like; others don't. Back in the fall of 2010, Robert McDuffie toured the country with Glass's nod to Vivadli,  American Four Seasons . In the Chicago Tribune , John von Rhein called it ,   "a Glass half empty." Mike Paarlberg  loved the piece , mostly for not sounding like Koyaanisqatsi . Across the pond, two different reviewers for the same paper had very different opinions , as Richard Guerin points out. In the London Telegraph, Ivan Hewett hailed American Four Seasons as "classic art"; Michael White called it "unmitigated trash." Here's the last movement. Decide for yourself: