Secrets of Synthesis
| Wendy Carlos | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Walter Carlos |
| Born |
November 14, 1939 Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States |
| Genres | Electronic, classical, ambient, jazz, synthpop |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, keyboardist |
| Instruments | Synthesizer, keyboards, vocoder |
| Years active | 1968–present |
| Labels | Columbia Masterworks, CBS, Audion, Telarc, East Side Digital |
| Website | wendycarlos |
Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos; November 14, 1939) is an American composer and keyboardist best known for her electronic music and film scores. Born and raised in Rhode Island, Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University before moving to New York City in 1962 to study music composition at Columbia University. Studying and working with various electronic musicians and technicians at the city's Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, she oversaw the development of the Moog synthesizer, then a relatively new and unknown keyboard instrument designed by Robert Moog.
Carlos came to prominence with Switched-On Bach (1968), an album of music by Johann Sebastian Bach performed on a Moog synthesizer which helped popularize its use in the 1970s and won her three Grammy Awards. Its commercial success led to several more keyboard albums from Carlos of varying genres including further synthesized classical music adaptations and experimental and ambient music. She composed the score to two Stanley Kubrick films, A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980), and Tron (1982) for Walt Disney Productions.
In 1979, Carlos was one of the first public figures to disclose having undergone gender reassignment surgery.
Carlos was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the first of two children born to working-class parents. Her mother played the piano and sang and had an uncle who played the trombone and another who played the trumpet and drums. She began piano lessons at six years of age, and wrote her first composition, A Trio for Clarinet, Accordion, and Piano, at ten. Carlos attended St. Raphael Academy, a Catholic high school in Pawtucket. In 1953, at fourteen, Carlos won a scholarship for a home-built computer at the Westinghouse Science Fair, a research-based science competition for high-school students. From 1958 to 1962, Carlos studied at Brown University and graduated with a degree in music and physics, during which she taught lessons in electronic music at informal sessions.
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