Thursday Afternoon Diversion: Happy Birthday Philip Glass

By Kevin Robinson in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 2, 2012 9:20PM

Earlier this week composer Philip Glass celebrated his 75th birthday. To celebrate, Glass attended the US premier of his Ninth Symphony, and NPR has released a 1999 interview with the composer and his counsin, this American Life's Ira Glass. Today, though, we're taking a look back to the 1970's, at some of the animated shorts Glass scored for Sesame Street. That series, "Geometry of Circles," unnumbered animation pieces commissioned by Cathryn Aison and based on her storyboard consist of the movement of six circles (each with a different color of the rainbow) that are formed by and split up into various geometric patterns. And while Glass is associated with the minimalist movement in contemporary classical, these vocal and instrumental pieces underscore the animation in a style that closely resembles the "Dance" numbers and the North Star vignettes written during the same time period as his Einstein on the Beach opera.