He also worked as a plumber.

> Throughout this period, Glass supported himself as a New York cabbie and as a plumber, occupations that often led to unusual encounters. “I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo,” he says. “While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/nov/24/arts.highe...

File under art imitates life: the episode of Portlandia where Fred and Carrie hire Aimee Mann and Sarah McLachlan as house cleaners

IMO the sign of a true artist. She/He lives for her/his art, but does not expect from it to provide for her/him.

Man, that's just great. Movie-like scene.

There are a couple of great anecdotes about Glass working at other jobs while starting out as a composer, one involving the art critic of Time magazine and another about driving a taxi.

https://interlude.hk/philip-glass-composer-taxi-driver/

'Glass understood that he had finally arrived as a composer when a woman tapped on the side of his cab and told him “you have the same name as a very famous composer.”

He was also roommates with the Viking of 6th Avenue, Moondog

And cousin(?) of Ira Glass.

I first herd Einstein on the Beach after a particularly manic period in undergrad. My advisor wasn't familiar with it, and I may have spooked her a bit try to explain it. I think to this day its great background music for programming work, but to me more because it can illicit that sense of young focus and drive that I find increasingly fleeting. Perhaps not unlike how music can "wake up" dementia patients. It elicits a deep base response.

Anyhow, I didn't know that either about his life. Very fascinating.

As an aside I believe I discovered Einstein on the Beach after listening to Hydrogen Jukebox. I wonder how others come about listening to it for the first time. Especially those in their 30s like myself who were born a decade after its success.

I'm a massive fan of Einstein On the Beach. It continues to be one of my favorite pieces of music, since first hearing it 12 years ago. There's a vitality and a sense of energy to it that keeps me coming back. It's also large enough in scope that I've been able to spend a long time chewing it over and digesting all of it's movements.

I think a unique quality of it is the contrast between it's simplistic harmonic content and it's constantly modulating structure. The simplicity of the tonality (one key center, very slow chord changes, non-florid counterpoint) allows the listener to focus on the modulating phrase lengths and the texture of the stacked rhythms.

This is an interesting inversion of something like, say, a classic bebop tune, which might be melodically and rhythmically complex or divergent, but keep it's structure predictable with 4 bar, 8 bar, or 32 bar chunks of time.

I think the effect in it's fast movements is like being in the middle of a massive rush of water. It's uniform in texture, but it has an intensity and sense of turbulence that is overwhelming as it passes you.

Here is a live performance. Interesting to see how it is being sung.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL9Rjn7EiRw

I discovered Einstein on the Beach this year, also in my 30s, and was nearly brought to tears. I played classical piano for most of my youth and had a deep appreciation for it but stopped exploring new composers during years of depression.

It’s a wonderful experience with a nice pair of headphones. Something about the way the repetition lasts just long enough to produce a sense of anticipation and delight.

I think his soundtrack to Scorsese's Kundun is also excellent programming background music, I've listened to that soundtrack from beginning to end countless times.

Music in 12 Parts is one of my favourites for coding.

Ha. I was once on a street corner playing a copy of his 'Passages' record (with Ravi Shankar) when a stranger walked up to me and fondly recounted spending an entire summer digging holes with a crew to that record.

It seems that there may be a quality to his music that makes it well-suited to working.

While I love the opera, I've always found Einstein on the Beach really difficult to program to because of the distracting dominance of the spoken word parts (at least on some recordings) 'Oh these are the days my friend, and these are the days'. For me the Koyaanisqatsi score is the perfect stimulation for getting in the zone.

Discovered his "The Photographer" when it came out (I am older than 30).

https://youtu.be/oPCkt9VvkY0

For me, via a mashup with a fellow New York legend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQmjmR3DLig

He recounts being nearly mugged while driving a taxi, and other stories, in this Fresh Air episode with Terry Gross,https://freshairarchive.org/segments/philip-glass-legacy-fut...