GLASS FRAGMENTS 85
“Philip Glass’s music shows how simple ideas, repeated and refracted over time, can expand into something vast and hypnotic.”
Dan Samsa was commissioned by Philip Glass’s and the PRS to contribute a new work for Glass Refractions, a project celebrating the legacy of the influential minimalist composer. Rather than producing a conventional arrangement, Dan approached the commission by drawing on the structural principles that define Glass’s music, repetition, gradual transformation, and evolving harmonic motion, translating these ideas into a contemporary electronic sound world. These concepts were developed through Samsa’s distinctive 360-degree microphone recording techniques, allowing spatial perspective and acoustic detail to become part of the compositional process, subtly shaping the textures and evolving structures of the piece.
“I love music that has a very strict process, and when you find a process that really works musically it can be very exciting.”
THE PROCESS
“Experimenting with technology, but using the outcome of those experiments to determine new shapes and forms in music.”
To honour Philip Glass’s 85th birthday I developed a composition that functions as both a musical biography and a spatial experience. I transposed and scored 85 distinct musical motifs from Glass’s works, arranged in strict chronological order to trace the evolution of his career from its inception to the present day. Working with performer Alison in a church in Blackheath, we utilised a 360º microphone placed at the center of the nave. Alison recorded these fragments from dozens of different physical locations within the church, capturing the building’s unique acoustic response from every angle. By editing this material into a 3D sonic spatial collage, I’ve translated Glass’s signature structural principles (repetition and gradual transformation) into an immersive environment where his legacy moves around the listener in real-time.
GLASS FRAGMENTS 85: FULL PIECE
CREDITS
viola: Alison D'Souza
Composer and Sound Artist: Dan Samsa