Wendy Carlos

Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos; November 14, 1939) is an American musician and composer known for 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 helped in the development of the Moog synthesizer, Robert Moog's first commercially available keyboard instrument.

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 albums, 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 for Tron (1982) for Walt Disney Productions.

In 1979, Carlos raised public awareness of transgender issues by disclosing she had been living as a woman since at least 1968, and in 1972 had undergone gender-affirming surgery.

As of 2020^[update], much of Carlos's discography is out of print, and has not been licensed for digital distribution to streaming or download platforms.

Carlos was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to working-class parents Clarence and Mary Carlos. Her parents married in 1937 and Carlos was the first of two children. Her mother played the piano and sang; one uncle played the trombone and another played the trumpet and drums. She began piano lessons at age six, and wrote her first composition, "A Trio for Clarinet, Accordion, and Piano", at age ten.

Carlos attended St. Raphael Academy, a Catholic high school in Pawtucket. In 1953, at fourteen, Carlos won a scholarship by building a computer presented at the Westinghouse Science Fair, a 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.

In 1965, Carlos graduated from Columbia University with a master's degree in music composition, and assisted Leonard Bernstein in presenting an evening of electronic music at the Philharmonic Hall. Carlos studied with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening, two pioneers of electronic music in the 1960s. They were based in the Columbia–Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, the first of its kind in the United States. After Ussachevsky suggested to Carlos that she work in a recording studio to support herself, Carlos began working as a recording and mastering engineer at Gotham Recording Studios in New York City; she worked in this position until 1968. She called it "a really lovely occupation" and found it a useful learning experience.