26 JUNE 2026 (TORONTO, ON) — When Camille Thomas signed with the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label in 2017, she became the first female cellist in the label’s history to be awarded an exclusive recording contract. For her fifth album, following two orchestral recordings, a refined chamber music box set devoted to (and inspired by) Chopin, and Aznavouriana, a tribute to Charles Aznavour, Camille Thomas now turns her attention to Philip Glass, who will celebrate his 90th birthday on January 31, 2027.
It is almost unnecessary to introduce the American composer, one of the founding pillars of minimalist music, a movement born in the United States—particularly in the artistic and bohemian downtown New York scene during the second half of the 1960s. Initially presented in contemporary art galleries and museums, this music pioneered “new perceptions of time, based on repetition and gradual transformation. Glass dared to express more by using less,” as Camille Thomas succinctly puts it. This aesthetic profoundly altered the course of twentieth-century music, restoring the foundations of tonal harmony and rhythmic pulse after fifty years dominated by an avant-garde that had largely rejected these principles. In doing so, it attracted a vast audience extending far beyond the traditional boundaries of “classical” music—an ambition that Camille Thomas herself shares.
Philip Glass is, in a way, the catalyst for this album. “He told me that he had listened to my recordings of his works, especially Tissues, that he had greatly enjoyed them, and suggested sending me the scores of his two cello concertos.” The Franco-Belgian cellist was not yet familiar with these “two concertos, still unjustly too rarely performed,” but, she adds, “it was upon discovering them that the desire for this album was born.”
The Cello Concerto No. 1 (2001), commissioned for the fiftieth birthday of British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, “emerges as a masterful work in which the cello appears like a lion’s roar—a primitive and raw voice—before transforming into a song of absolute lyricism,” comments Camille Thomas.
For his Cello Concerto No. 2, Naqoyqatsi (2012), Glass adopted an approach reminiscent of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto (1945), adapting material from pre-existing film scores. Glass, who has composed extensively for cinema, returned to his earliest collaboration for the big screen with Godfrey Reggio (born 1940), a former monk turned avant-garde filmmaker whose work might be described as a form of abstract cinéma-vérité. Together, they created a trilogy: Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Powaqqatsi (1988), and Naqoyqatsi (2002). In the original soundtrack of Naqoyqatsi, the cello already played a central role, making it only natural for Glass to transform the material into a concerto. Camille Thomas offers here what she describes as “a personal interpretation, a ‘2.0’ version, intended to reveal its full richness.”
The cellist has also selected other works by Philip Glass drawn from the deeply moving films The Hours (2002), directed by Stephen Daldry, and The Truman Show (1998), directed by Peter Weir, in which the composer himself appears performing the original score at the piano.
The piano occupies a central place in Glass’s catalogue, notably through his Études (1994–2012), which are widely performed and recorded. “Through the cello,” Camille Thomas explains, she sought “to cast a new light on this music, particularly by arranging some of the études for cello ensemble. Thanks to its lyricism and its closeness to the human voice, the cello reveals a deeply intimate expressive dimension.”
Indeed, one of the remarkable qualities of Glass’s music is its ability to transform according to the perspective from which it is viewed—a quality vividly demonstrated by these striking transcriptions.
The choice of Jean-Michel Othoniel’s La Vague (The Wave) to illustrate this album stems from the resonances between the artwork and Philip Glass’s musical universe. This monumental sculpture, composed of glass bricks, impresses both through its physical scale and its poetic power.
As the light shifts, its colors continuously evolve while preserving its essential identity. This tension between change and permanence echoes Philip Glass’s compositional language, built on processes of repetition, variation, and gradual transformation. The work’s hypnotic dimension further strengthens this dialogue between the visual and musical arts.
The image of the wave itself provides another point of convergence. Its continuous motion, its ability to unfold, reform, and renew itself endlessly, evokes the characteristic dynamism of Philip Glass’s music, driven by an uninterrupted flow and a constantly evolving energy.
The association of Jean-Michel Othoniel’s work with Philip Glass’s music thus highlights the sensitive and poetic correspondences that unite these two artistic worlds.
