A piece of music by the composer Philip Glass will soon be performed under the tail of Oregon’s iconic Spruce Goose airplane. The piece, “1,000 Airplanes on the Roof,” has rarely been performed in full. It features numerous wind instruments, synthesizers, a vocalist and an actor performing scenes. Sarah Tiedemann, artistic director of Third Angle New Music, and actor Ithica Tell, join us to describe the performance in more detail and share its history.
The piece will be performed on May 20th and 21st at 8 p.m.
Dave Miller : From the Gert Boyle Studio OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. You can watch a performance this weekend of a piece by the composer Philip Glass while sitting under the tail of Oregon’s iconic Spruce Goose airplane. The piece is called “1,000 Airplanes on the Roof,” and according to the organizers of the concert, the one act sci-fi melodrama has rarely been performed in full. Sarah Tiedemann is the Artistic Director of Third Angle New Music. She joins us now, along with Ithica Tell, a long time Portland actor who plays the only role in this production. Welcome to you both.
Sarah Tiedemann: Thank you.
Ithica Tell: Glad to be here.
Miller: Sarah, how did it come to be that you’re doing a concert under a huge airplane?
Tiedemann: Well, every year I spend some time on the internet as I’m doing our programming and for some reason, I was drawn to look at the Evergreen Museum’s website. I have never been there before, at that point. I had never seen the Spruce Goose. I didn’t know very much about the Spruce Goose, but I just felt kind of compelled. And then saw that it was the 75th anniversary of the one flight that it had made and the project kind of spiraled from there.