Take seven minutes, just seven short minutes of your time, to (re) listen to Philip Glass's Metamorphosis Two . Then when you have recovered from this moment of grace, of pure sonic lace, open the version recreated by electronic music producer Max Cooper and pianist Bruce Brubaker, in the album Glassforms , released this June 5 in digital version. Appreciate the shady corners, the sparkles of ice and light, the galactic echoes composed like an open and breathable setting around Glass's work. Feel this breath that swells or underlines each note, and this myriad of reflections that suddenly gushes out at the turn of a sound trace.
Building fine organic membranes around already fertile soil, Max Cooper and Bruce Brubaker have created a magnificent fully alive interpretation of Glass's work, in the noblest sense of the word interpretation. A paradise of ecstatic forms first born live, following an order from the Philharmonie de Paris.
Vibrant from the inside
“Glass was one of the first musicians I connected with when I was a child. And I didn't know it yet, but what I liked about him was the rhythmic structures, the syncopes, the rehearsals, and a whole bunch of ingredients that we find in electronic music ", says by telephone Max Cooper. American minimalism has long been a source of inspiration for electronic music.
But here the genius is that it is not only a question of adding a touch of sound around a preexisting work, but well to make it vibrate from the inside, thanks to a tool specially created by the developer Alexander Randon . Bruce Brubaker's piano is directly connected to Max Cooper's synthesizer, which modulates the material produced. "I didn't just want to add electronic music on top, I wanted to integrate it into Glass's score, it was a real technical challenge", explains Max Cooper, for whom "each note becomes an electronic piece". The two musicians thus really play the same material together.
An artist who creates bridges
The producer of electro, who also creates dazzling visual works, explains to us that he was marked by the documentary Koyaanisqatsi , released in 1982, whose soundtrack is the work of Glass. "It was one of the first films to show me what we can do with this kind of abstract visualization and hypnotic repetition, and that we could create a powerful and emotional narration with a 90-minute film without characters, he explains. Philip Glass was very important in my development not only as an artist, but also as a visual artist. ”
Artist creating bridges, like all great artists, Max Cooper, former biologist, likes to make dialog the worlds: science and music, in his album Human, music and architecture, on the Aether project, and today classical music and music electronic. He tells us about this opera director, who one day let go of him: “I never thought that electronic music could be beautiful. "" A lot of people when they think of electronic music imagine young people making raves. They are never exposed to what electronic music can also be: something beautiful and reflexive ”.
Here he takes great pleasure in deconstructing the clichés, weaving links between these two separate worlds, which sometimes look at each other like faience dogs. And to conclude: “I often try to project myself into new musical universes. Taking ideas from different spheres is the very definition of creativity. "
- Glassforms (InFine)is available on digital platforms from June 5, and on CD and LP from July 24.
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- Philharmonie Paris
- Music
- Classical music
- Electronic music
- Culture