Philip Glass

Overview

Philip Glass is an American classical music composer and performer whose work has been credited with pushing the boundaries of Western music through its use of repetition. Although he's sometimes called a "minimalist," Glass famously abhors the term, preferring instead to call himself a “composer of repetitive structures.”

As a student, Glass studied philosophy and mathematics before pursuing music under the tutelage of the famed musicians Nadia Boulanger and Ravi Shankar. Glass' breakthrough was the 1976 opera "Einstein on the Beach," a 5-hour impressionistic exploration of the German scientist's identity.

In the years since, Glass has collaborated with pop artists like Paul Simon and David Byrne and provided music for major Hollywood productions, including "The Thin Blue Line" and "The Hours," while continuing to experiment through avant-garde films, operas, symphonies, concertos, and other forms.

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