Philip Glass Composes Music for a Sesame Street Animation (1979)

Last night, Philip Glass cel­e­brat­ed his 75th birth­day at Carnegie Hall, attend­ing the US pre­miere of his Ninth Sym­pho­ny. His long and illus­tri­ous career con­tin­ues. But today we’re bring­ing you back to 1979, when Glass wrote a com­po­si­tion to accom­pa­ny “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” a four-part series of ani­ma­tions that aired on the beloved chil­dren’s show Sesame Street. A strange detour for an influ­en­tial com­pos­er? Not real­ly. Not when you con­sid­er that Glass came out of a 1960s tra­di­tion that made mod­ern music more play­ful and approach­able.

And speak­ing of approach­able, don’t miss Philip Glass get­ting inter­viewed by his friend­ly cousin Ira Glass. You know Ira as the host of This Amer­i­can Life. The inter­view took place in 1999, and NPR final­ly brought it back yes­ter­day, at least for a lim­it­ed time. You can lis­ten here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on the Art of Sto­ry­telling

A Min­i­mal Glimpse of Philip Glass

Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occu­py Lin­coln Cen­ter: An Art­ful View