One of the fathers of minimalism on one hand, an icon of the most visionary and transgressive rock on the other. The bond between Philip Glass and Patti Smith is their shared, great love for Allen Ginsberg’s poetry. The homage to the man who went down in history as one of the prophets of the Beat Generation and the entire counterculture of the Sixties is a vibrant testimony to how music and poetry can meet in the name of mutual interaction. “It was 1988 when I agreed to participate in an evening in aid of the Vietnam Veteran Theater. In the days before, I happened to meet Allen Ginsberg in the St. Mark’s bookstore in New York, and I asked him if he wanted to perform with me on that occasion. We were in the poetry section and he took one of his books off the shelf, dwelling on Wichita Vortex Sutra. This poem, written in 1966, reflects the spirit of the period of anti-war demonstrations, and it seemed particularly appropriate to the situation. I composed the music to underscore Ginsberg’s recitative and we performed together at the Schubert Theater on Broadway. Allen and I were so pleased with our first collaboration that we immediately thought about how we could consolidate it. Starting in the spring of 1989, we invited the artist and designer Jerome Sirlin to participate in our meetings, which took place mostly in Allen’s East Village apartment: from these meetings various ideas emerged that would give life to a coherent libretto. Jerome began to make drawings that would later be used for the sets. Later, the director and choreographer Ann Carlson joined us, with whom we thought about the scenic realization of the project. Over time, we came to define a screenplay including 18 poems. Poems that together formed a “portrait” of America from the 1950s to the 1980s. Allen’s poems were reflections on social issues: opposition to war, the sexual revolution, drug use, Eastern philosophies, environmental unawareness.” […] “In combining the lyrics and the music I started from two considerations. The words themselves must be represented in their essence: in composing the music I therefore paid a lot of attention to respecting the musicality of Allen’s words. And then there is the musical setting within the words. For the poem Aunt Rose, for example, I used a 5/8 rhythm with the intention of representing the way someone walks with a limp. This is, in this specific case, the only relationship between the music and the words.” Philip Glass
