The American composer Philip Glass has enjoyed a degree of popularity unusual among contemporary composers. A pupil of Nadia Boulanger, he was influenced too by the Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar and has won a reputation as an exponent of minimalism, based on the systematic repetition of a motif, modified or extended.
Stage Works
Glass has won particular favour in some quarters for his stage works Einstein on the Beach, in collaboration with Bob Wilson, Satyagraha and Akhnaten. A more recent theatrical piece is Hydrogen Jukebox.