Review of the Month

Joshua Kosmon of the San Francisco Chronicle attended a concert of songs by Philip Glass to texts by Leonard Cohen. L'essential:

"'Book of Longing,' which opened the new season at Stanford Lively Arts, is an evening-long song cycle that weds Glass' music with the words of songwriter Leonard Cohen. It comprises nearly two dozen numbers, performed without intermission by a quartet of singers and an eight-member instrumental ensemble, and there is scarcely a moment in the piece that doesn't inspire shame.

"Long, tedious, witless and numbingly repetitive, 'Book of Longing' is a sort of perversely virtuosic display of awfulness. The only thing keeping it from being utterly negligible is its unshakable air of grandiose self-importance."

Snap! Worth reading the whole thing.

Review: Philip Glass takes on Leonard Cohen. Big mistake.