Wendy Carlos

Wendy Carlos, one of the great innovators in synthesized and electronic music, was born as Walter Carlos in Rhode Island on November 14, 1939.

Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University before moving to New York City in 1962 to study music composition at Columbia University.

By early 1968 Carlos had begun hormone replacement treatments under Benjamin's care, which began altering her appearance. This created some problems for Carlos when Switched-On Bach became an unexpected hit after its release in October 1968. Prior to a live performance of excerpts from the album with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Carlos felt terrified to appear in public. She cried in her hotel room and left wearing fake sideburns and a man's wig, and drew facial hair on her face with an eyebrow pencil to disguise herself as a man. Carlos did the same thing when she met Kubrick and for an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970.

Is an avid eclipse chaser. Her website contains many splendid photographs of solar eclipses from all over the world, taken since the early 1970's.

She composed the score to two Stanley Kubrick films - A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980) - and also Tron (1982) for Walt Disney Productions.

She underwent a sex-change operation in 1972, details of which she revealed during a surprise Playboy interview in 1979.

Walter's last credited release is "Sonic Seasonings" (1972).

The last album credited to 'Walter Carlos' was 'By Request' (1975). The first album released under the name 'Wendy Carlos' was Switched-on Brandenburgs (1980).

Carlos disclosed her transgender status in a series of interviews with Arthur Bell held between December 1978 and January 1979 and published in the May 1979 issue of Playboy magazine. She explained that Playboy had "always been concerned with liberation, and [I was] anxious to liberate myself".

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 sex reassignment surgery.

In 1985, Carlos spoke about the reaction to her transition: "The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent ... There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.

In 1998, Carlos sued the songwriter/artist Momus for $22 million regarding the song "Walter Carlos" (from the album The Little Red Songbook, released that year), which postulated that the post-sex reassignment surgery Wendy could travel back in time to marry her pre-transition self, Walter. The case was settled out of court, with Momus agreeing to remove the song from subsequent editions of the CD and owing $30,000 in legal fees.

In 2005, Carlos was the recipient of the SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award "in recognition of lifetime achievement and contribution to the art and craft of electro-acoustic music" by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States.