Philip Glass and Bob Wilson present Monsters of Grace to the world, an original musical and visual performance that uses the verses of Jalàl ad-Dìn Rumi, the greatest poet of Sufi culture, as a textual structure. Under Glass’s guidance, Armonie dell’Estasi takes a musical journey through the Sufi culture of Pakistan. It is a free musical itinerary, built through associations and sound counterpoints, through contrasts and visual assonances, where chaos refers to the search for an ordered musical architecture, noise becomes sound, organized music and improvisation – Pakistani music –, then a concerted serial structure – Philip Glass’s music –. The deafening and orderless noise of a Karachi market merges with the rhythmic beating of Sohrab Fakir’s tablas, in the Sufi temple of Shah Latif; the sultry and dark Pakistani night becomes the stage of the Olimpico in Rome, where the same group performs the repertoire in concert form; the same stage welcomes Glass's cold orchestra performing Monsters of Grace. Glass's story stirs the supporting elements of his own minimal autobiography - his Western classical education and the musical coming of age constituted by the Tangiers-Dehli trip, his experiences with Ravi Shankar and other interpreters of Asian music -, delves into some personal and non-academic considerations on mysticism, on music, on interpretation, introducing the themes of Sufi music. The images move freely and support the music which is, together with Glass's speech, the supporting structure of the documentary, which moves in a strange and bivalent territory: the minimal, cultured and refined music of Glass and the ancient, popular, oral, non-codified music of the Sufi mystic. And on these two distant streams Armonie dell'Estasi navigates with enthusiasm and freedom.
