“When you’ve lost a piece, it can be devastating, like the loss of a child,” says the composer, a father of four. That put an end to their adaptation of In the Night Kitchen, a crushing experience for both McDermott and Glass. “We’ve got to do this show before I die!” Sendak told them – but sadly he did die, shortly afterwards, in 2012.Ĭreepy tale … Mauricer Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. The pair visited him at his house in rural Connecticut to hatch some plans. Glass and McDermott had hoped to create an opera based on In the Night Kitchen, Sendak’s book about a boy almost getting baked in a cake. Tao of Glass owes its origins to the children’s author Maurice Sendak. I listened to that album obsessively when I was a student.” When you've lost a piece, it can be devastating, like the loss of a child “The first show I ever made professionally, when I left Middlesex Poly, used music from Glassworks. “It’s about my obsession with Philip’s music,” McDermott says, speaking in a cafe in London, near the offices of his Improbable theatre group.

Called Tao of Glass, it explores their creative relationship: the old master and the younger fan. This week, the pair will debut a new work at the Manchester international festival. Already renowned for his Olivier award-winning adaptation of Shockheaded Peter and such outdoor shows as Sticky (which saw the construction of a 100ft tower using Sellotape), Phelim McDermott has directed three of Glass’s great operas – Satyagraha, about Gandhi The Perfect American, about Walt Disney and Akhnahten, about the pharaoh who briefly brought monotheism to Egypt. Now 82, Glass has found another collaborator, one who “has a comfortable relationship with his unconscious”, and who is bringing the composer’s unearthly music to a new generation.

“Even with people I didn’t like very much.” Sitting in La MaMa, the experimental theatre in New York’s East Village, one of the founders of minimalist music is talking about a body of work that includes three symphonies based on David Bowie’s Berlin albums, two sci-fi operas with Doris Lessing, an orchestrated version of Icct Hedral by Aphex Twin – and that’s only scratching the surface.

‘I ’ve done very good collaborations with people I don’t know very well,” says Philip Glass.

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