Philip Glass (b. 1937) is an American composer.
Glass studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, then went to India, to Ravi Shankar, and there grasped that music could be built on repetition and rhythmic cycles rather than on development and climax. That insight became the foundation of minimalism.
Einstein on the Beach (1976), created with Robert Wilson, is a five-hour opera without a plot; the audience was free to leave and come back. It changed operatic theater.
Glass has written music for dozens of films (The Hours, The Thin Blue Line, Koyaanisqatsi). With David Bowie and Brian Eno he created the "Low" Symphony and the "Heroes" Symphony — orchestral versions of Bowie's Berlin albums.
Key works: Einstein on the Beach, the opera that was a revolution; the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack, music for a film about civilization; and the piano Études, meditative cycles.