The early works of veteran minimalist composer Philip Glass are making a rare appearance in Australia, but they’re being played on French bagpipes.
Philip Glass has been composing music for over 60 years, giving audiences an enormous catalogue of pieces across film, theatre, and opera. The more mainstream success of his later compositions has given cause to revisit – and reappraise – his early, hardcore minimalist works of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Lengthy pieces for electric organ, and arguably the most challenging of Glass’s oeuvre, are now beginning to receive fresh recordings and live performances. Such is the case with French bagpipe player Erwan Keravec, who has adapted four of Glass’s early works for Breton pipes.
Erwan Keravec – 8 Pipers for Philip Glass
- Featuring Nat Bartsch and more
- Monday 5 May 2025 – 7:30pm
- Melbourne Recital Centre
- Tickets here
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Calling in from France, ahead of his first visit to Australia, he tells me “the first time I heard those pieces on bagpipe was by Matthew Welch: the first piece, Two Pages.” The 2019 release from American composer and bagpipe player Matthew Welch was the lightning rod moment for Erwan to create his own arrangements of Glass works for pipes.
The four pieces Erwan chose to adapt – Two Pages, Music in Contrary Motion, Music in Fifths, and Music in Similar Motion – are all structured by the electric organ, in the midst of supporting instruments, and all composed in 1969. The process of acquiring the permission to perform these pieces, Erwan admits, was not overly difficult. But it did involve a few hoops and a fair bit of jumping.
“The first time I asked for the permission of Philip Glass,” he says, “if it were possible to play Two Pages on bagpipes, they ask if it is possible for me to write the score of an adaptation of the piece on the bagpipe. After that, I re-asked if it’s possible to play all the pieces Philip Glass wrote in 1969: Two Pages, Music in Fifths, Music in Contrary Motion, and Music in Similar Motion.”
Permission was therefore granted, provided Erwan did much of the creative heavy-lifting to score the adaptations himself. Beyond that initial challenge, the hardest part – asking for permission – was at least dealt with at an early stage.
Erwan says he had no direct contact with Philip Glass himself, but he did get a nice bit of promo from the composer’s publisher, Dunvagen Music.
“When we released the album last year,” he says of 8 Pipers for Philip Glass, the work being performed here in Australia, “I sent the recording to Philip Glass’s publisher. They posted on X a tweet, saying this is a really rare album, we really need it! So we are not really directly in contact but with his publisher.”
Given their fearsome length and usually hyper-repetitive form, the early pieces within Glass’s output are not commonly performed in light of their ‘difficult’ status. For Erwan, however, he found an ideal synchronicity between their consistent rhythmic structure and the bagpipe’s capacity for extended notation.
“The first piece I played is solo, Two Pages,” he says, “and it was really simple to adapt to the bagpipe. The sound of the instrument is really perfect for this kind of music: if you want something played really long, the bagpipe is played with a bag so you can play continually! There is something in common with minimalist music and bagpipe, and I decided to see, is it possible to play all the pieces he wrote in 1969? It was an opportunity we really had to do.”
This initial journey to the far-off shores of Australia is one which inspires a great deal of interest for the French musician.
“Of course I’m curious,” he admits, “because there is bagpipe in Australia. There is Scottish bagpipe, and the bagpipe I play…” he pauses, reflecting on the place held within traditional western music by the unique Breton pipes he has spent his career mastering.
“It’s like the first time I played in Scotland, I don’t really know what is normal for an audience in Australia, for bagpipe, if there is only Scottish music or if it is possible to play experimental music on bagpipe.”
He ponders what audiences would actually listen to when hearing bagpipe performers, especially given their relative novelty in concert halls. “Of course, when you play only contemporary music, there is something between the legacy and what the instrument can be adapted to.”
This relationship is one Erwan Keravec eagerly invites audiences to discover for themselves, presenting the early works of a landmark composer on French pipers for the first time down under.
Erwan Keravec will be performing alongside pianist Nat Bartsch at Melbourne Recital Centre on May 5 2025. Get your tickets here.
