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A compendium of queer people in the 19th and 20th centuries // Drawn and written by Michele Rosenthal

Wendy  Carlos

Wendy Carlos 1939to

Film score composer and electronic music pioneer. Growing up in Rhode Island, Carlos inherited a love of piano from her mother. She began taking piano lessons at six, and wrote her first composition when she was ten. She also had an early interest in electronics, building her own computer in high school which won her a scholarship. She went on to earn a master’s degree in composition from Columbia, which housed the first center for electronic music in the US. While there, she met the engineer Robert Moog at a trade show. Their friendship turned into an ongoing partnership, and Carlos is credited with providing vital feedback for the earliest Moog synthesizers. In 1967, with the support of her close friend and collaborator Rachel Elkind, Carlos began transitioning, though she would keep her gender identity a secret among her closest friends for the next twelve years of her career. The following year, she released her first album, Switched-On Bach, which used the Moog synthesizer to tediously compose the music of Bach note by note. It became the first classical album ever to go platinum, won three Grammys, and lent new credibility to electronic music. Her 1969 follow-up, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, was also well received. In 1971, she was asked to work with Stanley Kubrick on the iconic score for A Clockwork Orange. Her 1972 album, Sonic Seasonings, took a different route as an influential precursor to ambient music. By the late 70s, dressing up as a man for her rare public appearances had taken an emotional toll. She decided to go public as a trans woman through a 1979 interview in Playboy magazine, choosing Playboy because of its history as a “liberated” publication, though she later had second thoughts about the choice. She continued to enjoy a successful career after coming out, working with Kubrick once again on The Shining, and composing the music for the Disney film Tron, as well as releasing a number of her own albums. Today she is recognized as one of the important early pioneers of electronic music. She’s also a passionate photographer of solar eclipses.

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