Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Down Beat Jan. 28, 1953	performance recording
Billboard Magazine Nov. 1, 1952	#9 sales for Capitol Records
Billboard Magazine Nov. 22, 1952	#6 sales for Capitol Records
The Penguin Guide to Jazz
Allmusic

City of Glass, an album originally issued as a 10" LP by Stan Kenton, consists entirely of the music of Bob Graettinger. The original album has been reconstituted in different LP re-issues, and the entire set of Kenton/Graettinger Capitol Records sessions is on the digital CD City of Glass.

There is a great deal written in music history books about the period of artistic experimentalism after World War II in Europe and the United States. Much like the period in France after the Franco-Prussian War (Impressionism) and in the late 19th century, the pre/post World War I period of (Expressionism), the post World War I period of Modernism was no different with composers trying to 'write music for the sake of music' and not attaching it to a social meaning or meant for a social cause (see Darmstadt School). The LP City of Glass and the whole body of work from the Stan Kenton orchestra and Robert Graettinger (1947–1953) is a direct product of the experimental American music scene of the post World War II era. Though overshadowed historically by other compositional endeavours in jazz at the time attributed to George Russell, Neal Hefti or Lennie Tristano, Graettinger and City of Glass is important in the progress that was to be part of Third stream jazz.

This overall period of the Kenton orchestra (1947–1953) was the most innovative and fertile in terms of purely artistic output. Stan Kenton had reformed his orchestra in September 1947 with the avowed intention of playing "progressive" jazz designed specifically for the concert hall. Graettinger's music (as well as Pete Rugolo, Manny Albam, William Russo, Franklyn Marks, and Shorty Rogers) involves a great artistic departure for Kenton so to produce a New American music. City of Glass and those Capitol Records recording sessions become a logical step starting with band leaders such as James Reese Europe, Paul Whiteman, and others earlier attempting to elevate the art form of jazz beyond just "hot jazz" and jam session playing. There is a very clear connection to be made in the progress and innovation of large ensemble music (in both classical and jazz) that Graettinger's opus's fit into and would not just 'appear out of nowhere.' Contemporaries of the Kenton/Graettinger collaboration during that time such as Ralph Burns with Woody Herman, Boyd Raeburn (w/Eddie Finckel and George Handy) and Claude Thornhill (w/Gil Evans) help to clarify the important place where City of Glass sits in jazz history, though Graettinger's output and fame was affected by the AF of M recording ban (as compared to those other writers). The City of Glass sessions are part of a bigger portrait making Graettinger an important figure in the painting. Better than any other writer, Robert Graettinger fulfilled Kenton's aspirations to establish a New American Music.

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