Max Richter

Blending classical, electronic and rock influences into a style he calls "post-Classical," composer/programmer Max Richter ignores boundaries in favor of haunting, strangely familiar sounds. Born in Germany in the mid-'60s, Richter and his family moved to the U.K. when he was still a little boy; by his early teens, he was listening to the canon of classical music as well as modern composers, including Philip Glass, whose sound was a major influence on Richter. the Clash, the Beatles, and Pink Floyd were also important, along with the early electronic music scene; inspired by artists such as Kraftwerk, Richter built his own analog instruments. He studied composition and piano at Edinburgh University, the Royal Academy of Music, and in Florence with Luciano Berio. Richter then became a founding member of the Piano Circus, a contemporary classical group that played works by Glass, Brian Eno, Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt, and Julia Wolfe, and also incorporated found sounds and video into their performances. After ten years and five albums, Richter left the group and became more involved in the U.K.'s thriving electronica scene, collaborating with the Future Sound of London on Dead Cities (which features a track named after him) and Isness; he also contributed orchesrations to Roni Size's In the Mode. Richter's own work evolved from the Xenakis-inspired music of his early days into something that included his electronic and pop influences: 2002's Memoryhouse introduced his mix of modern composition, electronica, and field recordings, and the following year's stunning Blue Notebooks -- inspired by Kafka's Blue Octavo Notebooks -- showed off a more streamlined, and more affecting, version of this sound. 2006's Songs from Before paired Richter's plaintive sound with texts written by...