Philip Glass

The American composer Philip Glass is considered as one of the influential composers of the late 20th century. His music has often been described as minimal music, although Glass himself preferred to describe his work as “music with repetitive structures.” Glass was born in 1937 in Baltimore. In 1964 he travelled to Paris, where he studied with the famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with the composer and sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, who both have influenced his compositions. When he returned to New York in 1967 he attended a performance of works by Steve Reich, which left a deep impression on him. He subsequently began to compose in a simplified and consonant style, based on additive rhythms and a sense of time that has been influenced by the playwright Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he founded the Philip Glass Ensemble, an amplified ensemble with keyboards, saxophones, flutes and soprano voices, with which he continues to perform regularly.
In 1975 Glass composed his first opera, Einstein on the Beach, in collaboration with Robert Wilson. Later on this work became part of a trilogy on revolutionary figures in world history, which further includes the operas Satyagraha about the life of Mahatma Gandhi and Akhnaten about the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton. These works are regularly performed in the world’s leading opera houses.
Since the 1980’s, Glass writes music for influential and award-winning movies such as Koyaanisqatsi, Kundun and The Hours. From the 1990’s onwards, he composes more and more conventional classical music for string quartet and symphony orchestra.