| 1 | Name: | Mr. Philip Glass | |
| Year Elected: | 2009 | ||
| Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | ||
| Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1937 | ||
Philip Glass’s musical life began early; at eight he studied the flute at the Peabody Conservatory and by twelve he had begun composing. After receiving an M.A. in composition from Juilliard in 1961, he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and in India with the sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar. Glass’s composition matured in the early seventies, largely through works written for his own Philip Glass Ensemble. In 1974, with a performance of the complete Music in Twelve Parts at the New York Town Hall, he had his first performance in a traditional concert hall. Two years later Einstein on the Beach premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, bringing Glass accolades from the larger music world. This master work combines disparate media moments in unconventional visual juxtaposition with textless vocal exercises and numerals varying in pitch and rhythm. The operas Satyagraha (1980) and Akhnaten (1984) followed - the former portraying the early years of Mahatma Gandhi and utilizing a dronelike repetition of symmetrical sequences of chords to achieve haunting and hypnotic powers. In recent years Glass has focused increasingly on composition for theater, film and dance. His film scores have received three Academy Award nominations – for Kundun (1997), The Hours (2002) and Notes on a Scandal (2006) - and his collaborations with the director Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi, et al) are audiovisual tone poems of uncommon elegance and visceral power. All told, over the last 25 years, Glass has composed 22 operas, eight symphonies, 38 film soundtracks, numerous string quartets and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. In addition to his Academy Award nominations, Glass won a Golden Globe Award in 1999, the Asquith Award for Film Music in 2002, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010. He won a New York City Mayor's Award for Arts and Culture in 2013. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1994. | |||