At 80, Philip Glass Is Still Fighting To Get Rid Of The Minimalist Tag

Though he has a wide range of accomplishments in his kitty, media still tags renowned musician Philip Glass as "minimalist" remembered only for his 70s. Yet, over the past four decades, he is one of the most cosmopolitan musicians, who has made various cross-border collaboration to experiment music on an international arena.

In a recent interview to The Guardian, the musical genius said, "If people called me an American opera composer it would have the virtue of being what I actually do. This is the reality. God forbid we should be accurate." When asked about his music style, he described it as "music with repetitive structures."

"The problem is no one is doing minimalism now. It's music we wrote in the 1970s. It's over 30 years out of date. It's a crazy idea to use a description made up by journalists and editors to cover all kinds of music. It's more confusing than descriptive," he added in the same interview.

Glass first gained international acre edition "Koyaanisqatsi," "Einstein on the Beach" and "Satyagraha." In his career, he has associated with Allen Ginsberg, Robert Wilson, Doris Lessing, Martin Scorsese, Ravi Shankar, Woody Allen, David Bowie, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen and much more. In addition, he has penned eleven symphonies, 26 operas and 20 ballets, and dozens of film and theater scores.

"Glass, like his one-time collaborator Leonard Cohen, has followed decades of plodding workmanship, relative poverty, and cult fandom with an old age of glory and near-universal acclaim," an opinion on Forward described him. The feature further narrated about how he drove a taxi to meet the ends during the debut of Einstein at The Beach. And, he wasn't able to quit his day jobs until he was 41.

Philip Glass turns 80 on January 31. And his website rightly states, "There has been nothing 'minimalist' about his output."

TagsPhilip Glass, Phili Glass 80