Philip Glass

Philip Glass (1937- ), American composer and performer, whose music is built around a very few musical phrases that are repeated over and over with slight changes in pattern and rhythm. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he was educated at the Juilliard School and studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He was greatly influenced by Indian sitar player and composer Ravi Shankar, as well as by fellow American exponents of minimalism, Steve Reich and Terry Riley. He often performs his own compositions with his own ensemble. His best-known works are the operas Einstein on the Beach (1976); Satyagraha (1980), about Mohandas Gandhi; Akhnaten (1984); The Voyage (1992), about Christopher Columbus; and Waiting for the Barbarians (2005), based on the novel of the same name by J. M. Coetzee. He has also written music for the films Koyaanisqatsi (1983), Powaqqatsi (1987), Kundun (1997), The Hours (2002), and Notes on a Scandal (2006), as well as for the 1999 release of a remastered version of Tod Browning's Dracula (1931). Notable among his concert works are a violin concerto (1993) and five symphonies.