La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14 1935) is an American composer and musician. Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer (Strickland 2001), and one of the four most celebrated leaders of the minimalist school, along with Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, despite having little in common formally with Glass or Reich. Young is also probably the least heard and least well-known of the major minimalist composers. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, or drone music. Both his proto-Fluxus and "minimal" compositions question the nature and definition of music and often stress elements of performance. Life Born to a Mormon family in Bern, Idaho, his family moved several times in his childhood while his father searched for work before settling in Los Angeles, California. He studied at Los Angeles City College, and came out a