Public radio follows pianist Frank Glazer’s ‘Long Road’
Pianist Frank Glazer in 2006. Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.
Public radio listeners now know that pianist and Bates artist-in-residence Frank Glazer is looking ahead to 2014-15: He plans to perform a season-long survey of preludes and fugues by J.S. Bach, and the complete mazurkas by Frédéric Chopin.
The occasion? His 100th birthday.
Glazer revealed this idea — along with his intentions for the 2012-13 season, news of a forthcoming book and much more — in a wide-ranging interview with Dick Gordon on American Public Media’s popular program The Story.
Broadcast March 2, the piece follows Glazer through a musical career reaching back to the 1920s, looks at the pianistic technique that has served him so well for so long and divulges his thoughts about what awaits after an extraordinarily long and productive life. (Available on the website for The Story, the piece will also be transmitted by Maine Public Broadcasting at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 14.)
Glazer himself, in fact, raised the subject of his passing. “My wife [Ruth Glazer] died five years ago, and I know that I’m going to be put as close to her as can be done — I already told the fellow who takes care of that kind of thing — so once more I’ll be with her,” he told Gordon.
“And you might say, ‘Well, you can’t converse and what not.’ But when you are asleep in bed, and you’re alive, you can’t converse with each other anyway. But at least I’ll be next to her, so it will be a long, long, long sleep. And that is consoling to me.”
