In July 2005, filmmaker Scott Hicks started shooting a documentary about the composer Philip Glass to celebrate his 70th birthday in 2007. Over the next 18 months, Scott followed Philip across three continents – from his annual ride on the Coney Island “Cyclone” to the world premiere of his new opera in Germany and in performance with a didgeridoo virtuoso in Australia.

Allowed unprecedented access to Glass’ working process, family, spiritual teachers and long time collaborators, Hicks worked with a skeleton crew and shot the lion’s share of the film himself, giving us a singular revelation into the life of this surprising and complex man. THIRTEEN’s American Masters: GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts premieres nationally, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). This documentary is a mosaic film portrait of one of the greatest – and at times controversial – artists of this era. The film coincides with the DVD release from KOCH LORBER Films.

“The music of Philip Glass is instantly recognizable. Its layered, repetitive notes are transcendent to some and unbearable for others. Yet, no one can dispute the influence Glass has over contemporary music,” says Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of American Masters, a six-time winner of the Emmy Award® for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series. “This film offers a fascinating personal study of the dedicated artist doing what he does best – from making music to making pizza.”

Over the year and a half of shooting, GLASS follows the innovative composer with a casual, immediate honesty. The film features performance footage of Glass’ seminal collaboration with Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach, interviews with former partners JoAnne Akalaitis and Holly Critchlow, artist Chuck Close, musician Nico Muhly and directors Woody Allen, Errol Morris, Godfrey Reggio and Martin Scorsese.

Born in 1937, Glass grew up in Baltimore and was educated at the University of Chicago and The Juilliard School. After a period in Europe where he studied with the legendary Nadia Boulanger and the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, he returned to New York in 1967 to form the Philip Glass Ensemble. The radical musical group performed at various art happenings in the downtown gallery scene, where Glass cultivated his signature sound. His unique soundscape of reiterative structures was initially vilified but has since achieved international acclaim. Today, his versatile, prolific body of work spans multiple genres including opera, symphony, experimental theater and dance, film score – for which he has received three Oscar nominations – and even rock. His collaborators have ranged from Allen Ginsberg and Twyla Tharp to David Bowie and Paul Simon to Yo-Yo Ma and Doris Lessing.

A presence on Broadway, in Hollywood, at Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein was a major force in twentieth century music. His exuberant and dramatic style caught the heart of America, bringing classical music to thousands of people from diverse backgrounds. More than any American conductor before him, Bernstein expanded the audience of classical music while maintaining a deep artistic integrity.

Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1918. His parents were first generation Jewish immigrants from Russia. Though he began learning the piano at age ten, his family hoped he would follow a more practical route, and sent him to the Boston Latin School. After graduating, he attended Harvard University, where he majored in music. His interest was in becoming a concert pianist, but upon graduating he began to seriously study orchestration at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

More important than any of the formal training, however, were the summers he spent in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, studying with the great conductor Serge Koussevitzky. In 1942, Koussevitzky invited Bernstein to be the assistant conductor at Tanglewood. Though very young for a conductor, his flamboyant style and emotionally charged performances caught the attention of others in the classical music community—one of whom was Arthur Rodzinzki, who appointed him assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

It was at the New York Philharmonic that Bernstein got his big break. Asked to fill in for an ailing guest conductor, Bernstein (then only twenty-five) conducted a difficult and energetic performance with only an evening’s preparation. Impressing all who came, Bernstein found himself on the cover of The New York Times — an instant celebrity. Within two years he was named the director of the New York City Symphony. He spent much of the 1950s conducting, teaching, and becoming involved in composing for non-classical genres. Of his many popular efforts of the time, On the Waterfront (1954), Candide (1956), and West Side Story (1957) are the best known. For On the Waterfront he received an Academy Award, and for nearly everything he did, he received the acclaim of an adoring public.

In 1957, Bernstein returned to the New York Philharmonic, where he was to make his greatest contribution to the music world. The versatile musical genius that had made him a success on Broadway and in the classical concert halls of the world, found its true home at Lincoln Center. For the next eleven seasons, Bernstein would energize the Philharmonic and American classical music in a way no other director had done. Taking advantage of the recent technological advance of television, Bernstein presented classical music to a wider audience. While he toured throughout the world, visiting seventeen different countries, he also concentrated on creating accessible performances for the average American. For both children and adults, he created shows which were both entertaining and educational. By the time of his resignation from the Philharmonic, he had conducted nine hundred and thirty nine concerts with the orchestra—an unprecedented amount.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Bernstein concentrated on the solitary act of composing, while maintaining a presence in the music world. He was often derided for his political involvement, which included his early stance against the Vietnam war and his support of the Black Panthers, but continued to draw crowds internationally for his entire career. On April 19, 1990 Bernstein conducted a fiftieth anniversary concert commemorating his beginnings as a conductor at Tanglewood. Three months later he died. Until the very end of his life, Leonard Bernstein maintained the verve that had invigorated the American classical music world and brought thousands of listeners closer to the music he loved so much.

George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn in 1898, the second of four children from a close-knit immigrant family. He began his musical career as a song-plugger on Tin Pan Alley, but was soon writing his own pieces. Gershwin’s first published song, “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Get ‘Em,” demonstrated innovative new techniques, but only earned him five dollars. Soon after, however, he met a young lyricist named Irving Ceaser. Together they composed a number of songs including “Swanee,” which sold more than a million copies.

In the same year as “Swanee,” Gershwin collaborated with Arthur L. Jackson and Buddy De Sylva on his first complete Broadway musical, “La, La Lucille”. Over the course of the next four years, Gershwin wrote forty-five songs; among them were “Somebody Loves Me” and “Stairway to Paradise,” as well as a twenty-five-minute opera, “Blue Monday.” Composed in five days, the piece contained many musical clichés, but it also offered hints of developments to come.

In 1924, George collaborated with his brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin, on a musical comedy “Lady Be Good”. It included such standards as “Fascinating Rhythm” and “The Man I Love.” It was the beginning of a partnership that would continue for the rest of the composer’s life. Together they wrote many more successful musicals including “Oh Kay!” and “Funny Face”, staring Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. While continuing to compose popular music for the stage, Gershwin began to lead a double life, trying to make his mark as a serious composer.

When he was 25 years old, his jazz-influenced “Rhapsody in Blue” premiered in New York’s Aeolian Hall at the concert, “An Experiment in Music.” The audience included Jascha Heifitz, Fritz Kreisler, Leopold Stokowski, Serge Rachmaninov, and Igor Stravinsky. Gershwin followed this success with his orchestral work “Piano Concerto in F, Rhapsody No. 2″ and “An American in Paris”. Serious music critics were often at a loss as to where to place Gershwin’s classical music in the standard repertoire. Some dismissed his work as banal and tiresome, but it always found favor with the general public.

In the early thirties, Gershwin experimented with some new ideas in Broadway musicals. “Strike Up The Band”, “Let ‘Em Eat Cake”, and “Of Thee I Sing”, were innovative works dealing with social issues of the time. “Of Thee I Sing” was a major hit and the first comedy ever to win the Pulitzer Prize. In 1935 he presented a folk opera “Porgy and Bess” in Boston with only moderate success. Now recognized as one of the seminal works of American opera, it included such memorable songs as “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “I Loves You, Porgy,” and “Summertime.”

In 1937, after many successes on Broadway, the brothers decided go to Hollywood. Again they teamed up with Fred Astaire, who was now paired with Ginger Rogers. They made the musical film, “Shall We Dance”, which included such hits as “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” Soon after came “A Damsel in Distress”, in which Astaire appeared with Joan Fontaine. After becoming ill while working on a film, he had plans to return to New York to work on writing serious music. He planned a string quartet, a ballet and another opera, but these pieces were never written. At the age of 38, he died of a brain tumor. Today he remains one of America’s most beloved popular musicians.