Philip Glass

Philip Glass grew up in Baltimore, born in 1937, sorting stock in his father's record store, where the discs that would not sell, much of it modern chamber music, went home to be studied. After Juilliard and lessons in Paris with the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger, the turning point came from elsewhere: hired to notate music by the Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, he absorbed a new way of thinking about rhythm as addition and repetition.

Back in New York he formed his own ensemble and paid the rent driving taxis and working as a plumber, well into his thirties. Then Einstein on the Beach, the nearly five-hour opera he made with director Robert Wilson in 1976, changed his fortunes, and his pulsing, repetitive style eventually reached concert halls, opera houses, and film soundtracks everywhere.

Start with Glassworks, a set of six short pieces made as an introduction to his sound. Then go deeper with the opera Akhnaten, about an Egyptian pharaoh who invented his own religion.