Philip Glass to Teach at Cal State Arts Festival

Composer Philip Glass will talk about his music and the collaborative elements of text and musical composition this weekend at Humboldt State as part of California State University’s fourth annual Summer Arts Program.

Sponsored by the 20 Cal State campuses, the monthlong arts festival on the Arcata campus features professional performances and instruction by artists in the fields of theater, dance, music, visual arts, film/video, creative writing and new technology.

The schedule includes workshops in chamber music, master classes in baroque flute, and demonstrations in sculpture firing and environmental dance. Guest artists include the Limon Dance Company, sculptor Italo Scanga, New York Metropolitan soprano Marvis Martin and saxophonist John Sampen.

More than 100 guest artists, faculty members and as many as 550 students have participated in this year’s program.

“It has been extremely well received this year. We’re now attracting students from all over the country and the world,” said Diane Vines, executive director of CSU’s Summer Program. When the festival started in 1986, 350 enrolled, she said.

Vines points to the variety of disciplines offered and the small teacher/student ratio as reasons behind their success: “Our program is quite unusual. We offer something unique for people on the West Coast. We provide what most people do in one year in only one month. The interaction is more intense than a lecture or a workshop. Students also get a chance to study with people they never could have studied with otherwise.”

The Garth Fagan Bucket Dance group will perform Saturday and the Fine Arts Brass Quintet will play Sunday. The festival ends Aug. 5.