Philip GlassBirth Place: Baltimore, Maryland, USA Date of Birth: January 31, 1937 Heritage: American Contact Philip Glass | 
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The Hours Background: Music composer Philip Glass first gained international prominence with “Einstein on the Beach” (1976), a collaboration with Robert Wilson, “Satyagraha” (1980) and “Akhnaten” (1983). Regarded as one of the most important composers of the late 20th century, Glass has also composed a trilogy of operas using Jean Cocteau's films “Orphee,” “La Belle et la Bete” and “Les Enfants Terribles.” On the big screen, Glass nabbed Academy Award nominations for his scores on Martin Scorsese's “Kundun” (1997), Stephen Daldry's “The Hours” (2002) and Richard Eyre's “Notes on a Scandal” (2006). He won a Golden Globe award for scoring Peter Weir's “The Truman Show” (1998). Other film credits include Godfrey Reggio's “Koyaanisqatsi” (1982), “Powaqqatsi” (1988) and “Anima Mundi” (1992), Paul Schrader's “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara” (2003), “Secret Window” (2004) and “The Illusionist” (2006). Glass has also experienced a flourishing career as a recording artist. Some of his well known albums include “Glassworks” (1982), “The Photographer” (1983) and “Songs from Liquid Days” (1986). Glass is the father of four. He recently separated from his fourth wife, Holly Critchlow, whom he married in 2001. Since 2005, he has been in a relationship with cellist Wendy Sutter. Glass was introduced to Buddhism by Ravi Shankar. He identifies himself as a Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist. In 1987, Glass, in cooperation with Columbia University professor Robert Thurman and actor Richard Gere, set up the Tibet House. He is a vegetarian.
Childhood and Family: Philip Morris Glass was born on January 31, 1937, in Baltimore, Maryland, to Benjamin Charles Glass and Ida Glass. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Europe. He has two siblings. Philip was introduced to music by his father, who owned a record store. He began taking violin lessons at age 6 and two years later attended Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory of Music to study the flute. At age 15, while in his second year of high school, the future composer entered an accelerated college program at the University of Chicago where he majored in math and philosophy. During this time, he worked part time as a waiter and at airports. He spent his time off playing the piano. After gaining his degree in 1956, Philip, who decided to become a composer, moved to New York to pursue a MA degree in composition at the prestigious Juilliard School, where he studied under Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma and took keyboard as his main instrument. In 1959, Philip became a winner in the BMI Foundation's BMI Student Composer Awards. A year later, he took the summer school program at the Aspen Music Festival, where he studied with Darius Milhaud. After graduating from Juilliard in 1962, he worked as composer-in-residence at Pittsburgh Public Schools before moving to Paris to study with the important composition teacher Nadine Boulanger on a Fulbright Scholarship. While in Paris (1964 to 1966), he was influenced by Ravi Sankar. Following research in North Africa, India and the Himalayas, he returned to New York and began employing Eastern techniques into his work. Philip has been married several times. He was married to JoAnne Akalaitis, a theater director, from 1965 to 1980. The marriage produced two children, Zachary Glass (born in 1969) and Juliet Glass (born in 1971). He then married Luba Burtyk in 1980, but the marriage was later dissolved. His marriage to artist Candy Jernigan ended when she died of liver cancer on June 5, 1991. In 2001, he married Holly Critchlow. They share two children, Marlowe and Cameron. They are now separated. Philip Glass is known by the nickname The Last Romantic.
Career: While still in Paris, Philip Glass contributed music to Lee Breuer's 1965 staging of “Comédie,” a play by Samuel Beckett. His collaboration with Breuer continued when he served as a music director for a Breuer production of Brecht's “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1966), which featured the theatre score by Paul Dessau. His first film work came when Glass was hired to transcribe the Indian music of Ravi Shankar for the soundtrack to the film “Chappaqua” (1966), by director and writer Conrad Rooks. After researching music through Africa and India, Glass returned to New York City in 1967 and began developing his minimalist compositional style. During 1967 to 1968, he composed nine pieces, including “Strung Out,” “Gradus,” “Music in the Shape of a Square,” “How Now” and “1+1.” In September 1968, he had his first concert of new music at Jones Mekas' Film-Makers Cinemathèque. Initially, Glass' work met with large opposition from the classical establishment and he had to take on odd jobs in order to survive. In 1970, Glass co-founded the Mabou Mines Theater Company in New York City with long time partner Lee Breuer, Glass' then-wife JoAnne Akalaitis, Ruth Maleczech, David Warrilow and Frederick Neuman. He also formed the Philip Glass Ensemble in the early 1970s, a seven piece group comprising of a variety of keyboards, wind instruments (saxophones, flutes) and soprano voices. At first, the music group found success at art galleries before entering underground rock clubs. Glass' music for his ensemble climaxed with “Music in Twelve Parts,” a set of twelve pieces that he wrote between 1971 and 1974. It has been considered a landmark in minimalistic style. After suffering rejections to publish his music, Glass eventually set up his own record label named Chatham Square Productions in 1971. He released his debut recording, “Music with Changing Parts,” in 1972. Because of the success of “Music in Similar Motion/Music in Fifths,” which enjoyed substantial honor abroad, he was signed by British rock label Virgin in 1974. In 1975, Glass released “Einstein on the Beach,” which he wrote and scored and was designed and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson. The opera opened at the Avignon Festival in France on July 25, 1976, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in November the same year. The musical score would become the first in a generally related thematic trilogy. The second part of the trilogy, “Satyagraha” (1980), loosely based on the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi, had its North American premiere at the Artpark in New York on July 29, 1981. The last of the trilogy, “Akhnaten” (1983), based on the life and religious convictions of the Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), premiered internationally at the Stuttgart State Opera under the German title “Echnaton” on March 24, 1984, and the Houston Grand Opera on October 12, 1984. Also in 1975, Glass made his feature acting debut in the experimental drama “What Maisie Knew.” However, it was not until three years later that Glass earned his first feature credit as a composer thanks to his work on 1978's “North Star: Mark Disuvero” (“Mark Di Suvero, Sculptor”) by François De Menil. In 1982, Glass scored the music of the cult hit “Koyaanisqatsi,” which marked his initial partnership with filmmaker Godfrey Reggio. He won a Los Angeles Film Critics Association for Best Music for his work. Around this time, he signed an exclusive composer's contract with the CBS Masterworks label and launched “Glassworks” in 1982. A chamber music work of six movements, the album brought Glass' music to more audiences. The soundtrack album “Koyaanisqatsi” followed in 1983. He went on to release the popular record “The Photographer” and “Carmina Burana,” in which he teamed up with former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek (both also 1983) and Glass' best selling work to date, “Songs from Liquid Days” (1986), featuring lyrics from Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Vega and Paul Simon. In 1985, Glass composed the music of “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters,” a biographical film helmed by Paul Schrader, and jointly nabbed the Best Artistic Contribution award from the 1985 Cannes Film Festival for his effort. The same year, he worked on the PBS special “High Wire.” The remainder of the decade found music work on such films as wife JoAnne Akalaitis' “Dead End Kids” (1986), Godfrey Reggio's “Powaqqatsi” (1988, a sequel to “Koyaanisqatsi”) and Errol Morris's landmark documentary “The Thin Blue Line” (1988). 1986 also saw the premiere broadcast of “Einstein on the Beach” on PBS. In 1988, Glass joined forces with David Henry Hwang and Jerome Sirlin on the performance piece “1000 Airplanes on the Roof.” In the 1990s, Glass composed a string of symphonies, including “Low” (1992), “Concerto Grosso” (1992), “Symphony No. 2” (1994), “Symphony No. 3” (1995), “A Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra” (1995), “Echorus” (1994/95) and “Symphony No. 4 'Heroes'” (1996). He also composed operas like “The Voyage” (1992), based on a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, and a trilogy of operas using films of Jean Cocteau (“Orphee,” “La Belle et la Bete” and “Les Enfants Terribles”). Glass also composed music scores for a number of films during the 1990s, not to mention work on the ABC special “Peter Jennings Reporting: Guns” (1990), which became Glass' network TV debut. He was reunited with Godfrey Reggio for “Anima Mundi” (“The Soul of the World,” 1992) and was handed an Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival for Best Music for his work in “Candyman” (1992), a psychological thriller directed by Bernard Rose that starred Tony Todd. He also scored the sequel “Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh” (1995). Two years later, Glass gained widespread recognition for scoring the Martin Scorsese film “Kundun.” He received an Oscar nomination for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score - Motion Picture, among other nominations, for his work on the film. Glass then won a Golden Globe Award and an ASCAP Award for his contribution to the musical score of Peter Weir's “The Truman Show.” He also composed a new score for the 1931 classic “Dracula.” Since the early 2000s, Glass has composed scores for over 50 films. He netted a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score for the Nicole Kidman vehicle “The Hours.” The film also earned him other awards and nominations and the same year, teamed up again with Godfrey Reggio for “Naqoyqatsi.” Next up for Glass, he contributed music scores to “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara” (2003), for which he earned a Chicago Film Critics Association nomination for Best Original Score, “Secret Window” (2004), “Taking Lives” (2004), “Undertow” (2004), “Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry” (2004), “Neverwas” (2005), “The Giant Buddhas” (2005), “Roving Mars” (2006), “Abused” (2006) and “The Seeds “(2006), to name a few. For his score on Neil Burger's “The Illusionist” (2006), he took home an Online Film Critics Society nomination for Best Original Score and a Critics Choice Award for Best Composer from the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards. Glass picked up his third Oscar nomination for his original score for Richard Eyre's “Notes on a Scandal” (2006). He also received an Online Film Critics Society nomination, a Satellite nomination, and World Soundtrack nominations for Film Composer of the Year and Best Original Score of the Year for his effort on the film. Glass was nominated for a 2004 Emmy for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore) for his work on the “Pandemic: Facing AIDS” (2003) episode titled “Uganda/Thailand.” Glass' more recent and upcoming film credits as a composer include “No Reservations” (2007), “Animals in Love” (2007), “Repeat” (2007), “What Are You Looking For” (2008), “Les regrets” (2009), “Transcendent Man” (2009), “Mr. Nice” (2010), “Kepler” (2010, TV) and “Secret and Sacred: The Balinese Reincarnations” (2010).
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