The Complete Piano Etudes by Philip Glass: Houston Gets All 20 — With Jason Moran Coming Home
By Francis Page Jr.
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September 10, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — Ten pianists. Twenty études. One night at Jones Hall. And tucked inside Philip Glass’s sweeping piano cycle is a piece with Houston in its DNA.
On Saturday, September 12, at 7:30 p.m., Performing Arts Houston presents The Complete Piano Etudes by Philip Glass, a roughly three-hour program produced by Pomegranate Arts and performed by 10 distinguished pianists: Timo Andres, Inon Barnatan, Anton Batagov, Vicky Chow, Aaron Diehl, Daniela Liebman, Jenny Lin, Jason Moran, Christian Sands and Jiani Wu.
photo The Complete Piano Edtudes by Philip Glass
For listeners who think an “étude” sounds suspiciously like homework, Glass has a persuasive rebuttal.
These pieces began as studies—music written partly to strengthen and challenge his own piano technique—but grew into a 20-work cycle spanning the 1990s through 2012. Glass has described the complete collection as a trajectory of musical and technical ideas, while Pomegranate Arts considers the études his most personal body of work. The complete concert concept has reached major stages including BAM, the Philharmonie de Paris, Lincoln Center and Walt Disney Concert Hall.
A Composition With a Houston Birth Certificate Houston’s performance carries an extra layer of ownership.
Étude No. 17 was commissioned for the 25th anniversary of the Menil Collection in Houston and premiered in 2012. Glass’s official site lists the Houston commission among the milestones that helped shape the completed cycle.
There is even another fascinating wrinkle. Glass’s website now notes that an original sketch for No. 17 bore the title “Magic Psalm” and was later discovered tucked inside a book of Allen Ginsberg poems in Glass’s library.
So when No. 17 sounds through Jones Hall, Houston will not simply be hearing Glass. Houston will be hearing a piece of its own cultural history come home.
Jason Moran: Houston Made, World Acclaimed And then there is Jason Moran, arguably the evening’s strongest hometown connection.
Moran was born in Houston in 1975, began studying piano as a child and graduated from Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in 1993. After earning his bachelor’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music, he developed a career that has never behaved politely inside one genre.
He is a jazz pianist and composer, certainly—but also an educator, curator and visual artist whose work crosses film, museums, dance and multimedia installation.
The MacArthur Foundation named Moran a Fellow in 2010 for his genre-crossing approach to jazz. His visual work later anchored a solo museum exhibition that traveled through institutions including the Walker Art Center and Whitney Museum of American Art. He also composed music for Ava DuVernay’s films Selma and 13th.
For current context, there is an important update to older biographies: Moran’s long tenure leading jazz programming at the Kennedy Center ended in 2025, after 14 years. In 2026, his creative journey reached another milestone when the Gordon Parks Foundation named him the inaugural recipient of its Fellowship in Music.
That résumé makes Moran an especially intriguing Glass interpreter.
Glass’s music depends on structure, pulse and repetition, but the complete-études concept thrives on difference: 10 pianists encounter the same composer without being asked to sound alike. Moran’s musical life has been built around precisely that kind of conversation—between jazz and classical vocabulary, history and improvisation, keyboard and visual world.
Ten Artists, Ten Musical Lenses He is hardly alone in bringing star power. Timo Andres is an acclaimed composer-pianist; Inon Barnatan became the New York Philharmonic’s first Artist-in-Association; Vicky Chow is closely associated with the Bang on a Can All-Stars; jazz standouts Aaron Diehl and Christian Sandsbring another rhythmic vocabulary; and Jiani Wu provides an important Houston connection through Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.
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Pomegranate Arts intentionally builds these performances around differing musical personalities. That is the secret sauce: the score stays put while the human interpretation keeps moving.
Sixty Years Meets Nearly Fifty Years of Glass There is another Houston anniversary humming beneath the program.
Performing Arts Houston and Jones Hall both trace their beginnings to 1966. Performing Arts Houston’s anniversary history places the beginning of its collaboration with Philip Glass in November 1978.
That makes this concert feel almost custom-built for a milestone season: a decades-long artistic relationship, a Houston-commissioned étude, a hometown piano star and one of Houston’s signature performance halls converging on the same Saturday night.
Call it minimalism if you like. Glass himself prefers the description “music with repetitive structures.”
Either way, there is nothing minimal about this occasion.
The Complete Piano Etudes by Philip Glass takes place Saturday, September 12, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. at Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana St., Houston, Texas 77002. Tickets are listed from $39. Performing Arts Houston recommends arriving 45 to 60 minutes before showtime.
Twenty études may technically be called “studies.”
In Houston, this one feels more like a reunion.
Official Background Links
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The official Performing Arts Houston event page is available here: The Complete Piano Etudes by Philip Glass — Performing Arts Houston. Readers can also explore Philip Glass’s official Houston event listing, Philip Glass’s official Piano Etudes history, and Jason Moran’s 2026 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship.
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