Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Forward 50 2012

Philip Glass

The publication this year of the Forward 50 is happening a little differently. We are rolling out videos of the Top 5, the American Jews who we think top our list of those who have impacted the news most significantly in the past year. Count down with us through Monday as we profile the new faces of Jewish power.

Philip Glass is not only one of America’s most important composers but also one of its most prolific. And, despite turning 75 on January 31, he shows no signs of slowing down.

Recent months have seen high-profile performances of canonical Glass works as well as premieres of new ones. “Einstein on the Beach”, his 1976 “portrait opera” that the Washington Post called “one of the seminal artworks of the century,” has been on a yearlong international tour, receiving rave reviews.

Earlier in the year Glass’s ninth Symphony was premiered by the Bruckner Orchester Linz in Austria, followed by an American debut at Carnegie Hall on his birthday. In August, his 10th Symphony was performed in Aix-en-Provence, France, and he has two operas forthcoming, including “The Perfect American,” based on the life of Walt Disney, which will premiere in January 2013. Though Glass doesn’t lack for awards, he added one more to the pile with this year’s Japanese Praemium Imperiale prize for music.

Glass has remained relevant politically, as well. A longtime supporter of Tibetan independence and other nonviolent political movements (he once described himself as a “Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist”), Glass saw his opera “Satyagraha,” based on the early life of Mahatma Gandhi, revived in November 2011 by New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. Fittingly, the production coincided with the height of Occupy Wall Street protests, and on the night of the last performance Glass joined OWS protesters outside of Lincoln Center, where he read from the opera’s libretto.

Few composers have made as big an impact in recent decades as Glass, and he’s not making his younger colleagues’ lives any easier. The first step for those composers who want to catch up is to keep up.

VIDEO


A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.