This weekend, you can watch a performance of a piece by the composer Philip Glass while sitting under the tail of Oregon’s iconic Spruce Goose airplane. The piece is called “1000 Airplanes on the Roof.” And according to Third Angle New Music, the organizers of the concert, the one act sci-fi melodrama has rarely been performed in full.
A piece of music composed by Philip Glass will be performed under Oregon's iconic Spruce Goose airplane.
Courtesy of Third Angle New Music
Sarah Tiedemann, the artistic director of Third Angle New Music, said part of the reason the piece hasn’t been performed much since it was written in the ‘80s is that it involves a strange collection of instruments and voices.
“It’s for two synthesizers, three wind players playing saxophones and flutes, and I’m playing something called the EWI (which is an electronic wind instrument), and then a vocalist and an actor,” she said. “So it’s kind of a theater piece. It’s kind of not really a classical piece. An orchestra wouldn’t really do it. It’s kind of like a cross between classical music and Depeche Mode.”
When Third Angle New Music sent away for the score, they discovered an additional complication, said Tiedemann.
“So it is handwritten, I assume in Philip Glass’s hand. It clearly hasn’t been revised other than scribbles on it in the last 40 years,” she said. “So there was a process with me on the floor with all of the parts: photocopying and cutting and pasting and transposing the instruments.”
Also, it was difficult to know what the full piece should sound like. “I managed to track down one archival video from a group in Scotland who did it 12 years ago, but that was just for a reference and that’s all we’ve got,” she said.
Ithica Tell, a long-time Portland actor who plays the only role in this production, said that because the score is so difficult, it can be hard to know the right time to perform her parts.
“We decided that we’re just gonna get someone to cue me, someone who’s incredibly capable of reading this music,” she said. “Someone’s gonna tell me when to go [and] I’ve taken the time to figure out how long based on the rehearsals my speech should take.”
It’s all worth it, though, for the opportunity of performing under the Spruce Goose.
“She’s beautiful, you know. You look at this plane and it’s silver and it looks like metal, but it’s wood,” said Tell. “There’s something vibrant about that still, in an earth and sky kind of way.”
The Spruce Goose, also known as the Hughes H-4 Hercules, is a prototype strategic airlift flying boat designed and built by Howard Hughes’s aircraft company in 1947, according to Wikipedia. It made but one short flight. It’s now on display at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.
“1000 Airplanes on the Roof” will be performed at the museum this weekend. Performances are at 8 p.m. this Saturday and Sunday.