Philip Glass

Person · Male

Philip Glass

US composer & pianist

From
Baltimore, United States
Since
1937–present
Rating
★ 4.75 (8 votes)
Releases
382
  • classical
  • modern classical
  • minimalism
  • opera

About

Philip Morris Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive phrases and shifting layers. He described himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped to evolve stylistically.

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Glass founded the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1968. He has written 15 operas, numerous chamber operas and musical theatre works, 15 symphonies, 12 concertos, nine string quartets, various other chamber music pieces, and many film scores. He has received nominations for four Grammy Awards, including two for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Satyagraha (1987) and String Quartet No. 2 (1988). He has received three Academy Award for Best Original Score nominations for Martin Scorsese's Kundun (1997), Stephen Daldry's The Hours (2002), and Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal (2006). He also composed the scores for Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Hamburger Hill (1987), The Thin Blue Line (1988), Candyman (1992), The Truman Show (1998), and The Illusionist (2006).
Glass is known for composing the operas Einstein on the Beach (1976), Satyagraha (1980), Akhnaten (1983), The Voyage (1992), and The Perfect American (2013). He also wrote the scores for Broadway productions such as the revivals of The Elephant Man (2002), The Crucible (2016), and King Lear (2019). For the last he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play.
Glass has received many accolades, including a BAFTA Award, a Drama Desk Award, and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, four Grammy Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. He has also received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995, the National Medal of Arts in 2010, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2018, and the Grammy Trustees Award in 2020.

From Philip Glass on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Member of

Discography

Albums 243

Showing 60 of 243. See them all on MusicBrainz

EPs 3
Singles 18
Live 19
Compilations 47
Other 52

Links

Teacher

Also known as

Glass · Phil Glass · Phillip Glass

Tags

  • composer
  • soundtrack
  • american composer
  • minimal
  • american
  • paul barnes

Identifiers

ISNI
0000000121367029
IPI
00012034058
IPI
00125609583

Data from MusicBrainz, saved 8 Nov 2026. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, covers from the Cover Art Archive and Apple Music.