Phillip Glass

In the mid 1970’s after high school I had decided to skip a year and travel rather than attend college. Buying a plane ticket I flew alone to Europe and hitchhiked from Holland to southern Italy and back. Arriving in Rome, Italy I found lodging in a small pension that was shared with a number of other travelers. I got to know a couple from New York who invited me to a concert one evening. We walked to the Spanish Steps on a warm night and found stairs going underground into a complex of rooms. Entering, we paid our fee for the performance and sat on the floor with fifteen other people in a circle on reed mats. There were three chairs in the middle, one having an electric organ/keyboard. The musicians came in and began performing a wonderful rhythmic wave of sound. It was a very intimate performance by Phillip Glass who would go on to make quite a name for himself as a composer. Rome, Italy