An American composer born in 1937.
Philip Glass, who is also a violinist, flautist and pianist, studied music at the Juilliard School alongside Steve Reich. A pupil in the USA of Darius Milhaud, he completed his training with Nadia Boulanger in France in 1963. Hired for transcribing Ravi Shankar’s improvisations for the music of the film Chappaqua, he discovered repetitivestructures before travelling in India. On his return to New York in 1967, he founded the Philip Glass Ensemble and composed in a repetitive, minimalist style for chamber groupings. Einstein on the beach (1976), in bringing him sudden celebrity, marked a turning-point in his career and was the beginning of a regular output of operas and orchestral works. Philip Glass is also a composer of film music. Among his works are 1+1 (1967), Music in twelve parts (1974), Satyagraha (1980, libretto in Sanskrit), Hydrogen jukebox (1990), Kundun (1997, for the film of Martin Scorsese), Waiting for the barbarians (2005), Four movements for two pianos (2008).
