Glass strikes chord with short films

  UCLA PERFORMING ARTS Phillip Glass’
orchestra will be performing at Royce Hall all week. The famous
composer’s music will accompany various short films.

By Howard Ho
Daily Bruin Contributor

Philip Glass and his ensemble performed music written for six
short films. Though none of the films had dialogue or plot, the
images were often arresting and the music evocative.

The music worked so well with the pictures because of their
length. Each piece was short and varied enough to carry the
audience without tiring them. Indeed, often one was lost in a
seemingly surreal overload of sights and sounds.

A case in point was the first film, “The Man in the
Bath” by Peter Greenaway, a film that juxtaposed images of
water, text and a frozen bath scene, which were shuffled around
like a deck of cards. The music exploded into a kind of minimalist
jazz, highly rhythmic and as disorienting as the film itself.

“Passage” by Shirin Neshat showed a burial
procession with the men carrying the corpse and the women in a
circle endlessly digging a grave. The film developed its characters
slowly, as did the music. However, it came off as being too
repetitive, both visually and musically.

“Diaspora” by Atom Egoyan was also repetitive, but
much more powerful. The image of a herd of goats was related to a
bonfire. Destruction and running masses, perhaps referring to Jews
during World War II, were ideas permeating the film and the music.
Glass’ music was very brutal, using harsh rhythms until it
climaxes into a hellish frenzy.

The next film, “Evidence” by Godfrey Reggio, showed
images of children with blank faces. It was by far the most
facetious of the films, especially when the children squirmed or
made interesting faces. Glass, however, underscored the
film’s premise with a somewhat lamentful saxophone-based
melody. Only at the end did the audience find out that the evidence
being presented was the mindlessness of children watching
television, making the film more obviously socially critical than
the others of the night.

The most intense film of the evening, “Anima Mundi”
by Reggio, seemed like an IMAX film, full of colorful animal
imagery. Glass displayed the heights of his powers, departing from
his minimalist style to give a symphonic score of grandeur and
subtlety. This was pulled off rather convincingly even though the
symphonic strings were replaced by synthesizers. The winds were
delightfully orchestrated and the drums evoked African music, with
which Glass is familiar from his collaborations.

The main dilemma of the Royce Hall concert was deciding whether
to watch the films or the musicians, who sit in an exposed
orchestra pit at the audience’s level. The orchestra consists
of less than ten people playing winds, vocals, keyboards and
percussion. Though Glass is a performer, he relegates himself to
the mostly lower timbres, letting conductor and keyboardist Michael
Riesman take up most of the animated arpeggios that dot
Glass’ musical landscape.

The event was a successful demonstration of Glass’ powers
to score short films. Yet, most of the films work at abstract
levels, perhaps a sign that Glass’ music is best suited to
abstract, experimental films. Tonight’s presentation of Tod
Browning’s 1931 “Dracula,” will give Glass the
opportunity to put that worry to rest.