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Wendy Carlos

Wendy CarlosAKA Walter Carlos

Born: 14-Nov-1939
Birthplace: Pawtucket, RI

Gender: Female [1]
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Electronic Musician

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Transsexual composer, synthesizer enthusiast

Electronic music composer, best known for her scoring Bach on the Moog synthesizer as Switched-On Bach vol. 1 (1968). Her work was used prominently in the Stanley Kubrick films A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), as well as Disney's TRON (1982). She later recorded a version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with Weird Al Yankovic.


[1] In 1967, Carlos underwent a sex change operation, changing her name from Walter to Wendy. Yet she continued to release music as Walter Carlos until 1975, making public appearances in masculine clothing and fake sideburns, until her official coming-out in an interview published in the May 1979 issue of Playboy. Carlos has proscribed further discussion of the operation, to the extent that it has become something of an open secret in the music press: for instance, she is listed in some prominent music discographies twice -- once for each of her different personas -- each entry containing duplicate information, yet with no reference to its obverse. Her sexual transmogrification was later glorified by eyepatched Scottish rock critic Momus. Momus had written a song about Carlos for his album The Little Red Songbook (1998), proposing that post-op Wendy Carlos could hypothetically twiddle through an Einstein-Rosen bridge and marry her pre-op self. Carlos sued Momus over this jape, and forced him to remove the song from his record.

    Sex Change Operation Male to female, 1967

Official Website:
http://www.wendycarlos.com/



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