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Glass's growing appeal is recognized at home and abroad. "Philip is an important force in the musical world today, and this explains why, thanks to composers like him, new American music is so wonderful right now," says Dennis Russell Davies, the American-born music director of the Stuttgart Opera, which has two Glass works in its repertoire. As principal conductor of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York, Davies is planning two concerts this summer that play off excerpts from operas by Glass and Wagner. It is a daring bit of programming, an attempt by a contemporary to assess Glass's place in opera's pantheon.
In person, the composer hardly seems so imposing, projecting instead an easygoing bohemian charm. With his deep-set, rather sad brown eyes, his tousled dark hair and his habitually distracted air, Glass might at first be mistaken for a leftover '60s hippie. But the unruffled exterior only partly obscures a highly educated, articulate man who possesses a fierce drive to succeed and is a shrewd observer and player in the game of musical politics. "Philip was always confident and always saw what he was doing and went after it," recalls his ex-wife, Theater Director JoAnne Akalaitis. Unafflicted with false modesty, Glass leaves no doubt that his favorite composer is himself. Says one friend: "When you hang out with Philip, you listen to a lot of Philip Glass music."
Where Glass hangs out is in Manhattan's seedy East Village, which has become the artists' crash pad that SoHo was in the '60s. On a block near the Bowery, Glass's brownstone stands near a forbidding Hell's Angels headquarters and a ramshackle men's shelter; panhandling winos, bag ladies and other urban lost souls are part of the cityscape. Glass loves it. "It's a great place to live," he insists. "This is one of the last authentic communities left in New York."
Chez Glass has a raffishness suited to the neighborhood. The composer shares the four-story town house with his girlfriend Candy Jernigan, 33, a free- lance record-jacket designer, whom he met a year and a half ago. In part- time residence are his two children with Akalaitis, Juliet, 16, and Zachary, 14. The household also includes two calico cats and a macaw. "I like to have a lot of life around me," says Glass, whose customary informal garb runs to nondescript dark shirts, well-worn corduroys or jeans and white sneakers or black boots. "I like all stages of the evolutionary ladder -- birds, cats, kids, a girlfriend. It doesn't bother my work a bit."
Despite the apparent chaos, Glass finds his home a restful place to work. He composes on a beat-up table, using a 25 cents No. 2 pencil, often working alongside his children. "When the kids come home from school, I sometimes still have to work, and there will be Zach doing his homework on one side of the kitchen table and me notating on the other," he laughs. Occasionally, he goes to the piano in order to gauge how long a particular section lasts, but, as is true of most composers, the sounds he hears are primarily in his head.