November 7, 2001. I was sitting in on a sound check at the IU Auditorium, observing a lively Philip Glass Ensemble going through the motions to prepare for the night's live performance of Koyaanisqatsi as part of the Philip on Film tour. The stage and house were bustling with activity, as members of the ensemble adjusted monitor levels and worked out kinks in part distribution, laughing, joking, yawning. A stoic Michael Riesman waved his hands and called out some measure numbers, and chaos became order. The ensemble began to play in meticulous rhythm, and a complacent Philip Glass sat cross-legged at his keyboard, staring off into space, maybe absorbing the sound from the monitors. He got up and walked slowly off the stage and into the auditorium, sitting right behind me and observing the ensemble from the house. Seemingly satisfied, he rejoined the ensemble, saying not a word, amazing me with his methodical observation.

The sound check was over, and I was called onto stage by the tour manager. He introduced us to Mr. Glass, who stood silently by the coffee cart, waiting for us. Even standing still, he looked animated. Charisma popped into my mind, and Glass graciously invited us back to his dressing room to talk. Just shuffling down the hall, he was bombarded with various people, but handled everything -- unnerved, unruffled. We sat down in his dressing room and the Five Minutes With Philip Glass commenced.

CH: Thank you for speaking with us, Mr. Glass. First of all, how do you like being on tour?

PG: Well I do it quite a lot, maybe eighteen or twenty weeks a year. We're now at the end of a ten week tour, so I'm really ready to take a break. But it's when I get a chance to play music in front of audiences, and it's a very good thing for composers to be able to play their music for people.

CH: That raises the question; do you consider yourself more a composer or a performer?

PG: Certainly a composer, but very early on, I conceived this idea of an ensemble to play the music. We've been together for thirty-two years but in fact I was a composer before then, and that's what I do all year 'round -- I only play half the year.

CH: How have the events on September 11 affected your tour as far as traveling and scheduling go, and have the ramifications of the event affected the music in any way?

PG: Well, of course, traveling is much more difficult at the airports? you have to be there much earlier. The traveling part of touring has never been easy, so it's not really become harder. What's happened is that the audiences are viewing many of these pieces quite differently than they did before. A work like Koyaanisqatsi, which we're doing here, it seems to resonate so much with events recently, though the film was made twenty years ago. So in a funny way, I haven't written anything special for these events -- I think Godfrey Reggio was a real visionary, and he saw things in the world, and society, which became articulated in current events in a way that no one anticipated.

CH: Recently your new record company, Orange Mountain Music, released the Music of Candyman. How has this been received?

PG: Well we've sold a lot of records on the Internet. I have a relationship with a commercial company, Warner, through Nonesuch, but we've been interested in starting an internet company, one for smaller projects like this, and we're going to start releasing quite a lot of our material which had not been released up 'til now. I think in the first three weeks we sold about 900 copies, which is very impressive. So it looks like there is an audience that will go for these harder to find pieces of music, and this is a way for us to make it available.

CH: The Philip on Film tour seems to include many areas in the United States, and in the Midwest in particular, that many consider to be culturally 'dead'. Has reaching audiences in these areas proven to be effective for you?

PG: I've been here two or three times before, as well as Columbia, Missouri and Ann Arbor, and Chicago is another important city. The Midwest has always been good for me. For one thing, we tend to go to university environments where there is a setting and there's an audience for the music. It has not been difficult for me to find audiences in the Midwest, so this is what we go to between the east coast and the west coast, it's a very important part of our tour.

CH: Well, thanks again for speaking with us Mr. Glass, and we enjoy having you here in Bloomington, and we hope you enjoy being here in Bloomington, and at IU.

PG: Thank you, I'm very pleased to be here, and we're always happy to come back.