Chances are, if you've spent any time in a cinema, you have heard the music of composer Philip Glass.

And if you are a devotee of new classical music or opera, he needs no introduction.

Glass, 72, is one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. He has written 20 operas, including the influential "Einstein on the Beach," as well as composed many symphonies and chamber works.

The music he has written for films spans three decades and includes such films as "Koyaanisqatsi," "The Hours" and "Notes on a Scandal."

His career took off in the late 1960s, when Glass and his Philip Glass Ensemble were at the forefront of the minimalist music scene that germinated in downtown Manhattan. Back then, he was mostly ignored by the classical music community. Times were tough, and to survive, Glass worked as a plumber and cab driver.

Since then, Glass has become less inclined to align himself with minimalism. These days, he prefers to describe his music with the label "repetitive structures."

Those circular musical structures, which elegantly and lyrically fold in upon themselves, have endeared Glass to many. But his style has alienated a great many, too.

This has served to conscript him to a musical neverland where even musicians rarely see him as a "classicist," the term he uses to describe his more recent musical pursuits.

On Wednesday, Glass will make a rare appearance at the Mondavi Center. He will perform on the piano and will be joined by his partner, cellist Wendy Sutter.

The works to be performed include a set of his piano etudes as well as "The Screens," which Glass wrote with African kora player Foday Musa Suso and arranged for cello and piano.

Sutter, a cellist who has appeared with the Bang on a Can All Stars, will perform Glass' "Songs and Poems for Solo Cello."

Glass talked to The Bee via telephone from his New York apartment about his career in film, opera and, of course, classical music.

The "Songs and Poems for Solo Cello" is a new outlet for you. What were you thinking about when you wrote it?

I was thinking about the tradition of violin sonatas that come from Franck, Fauré, Brahms and Beethoven. It's a hefty set of movements in the form of early solo cello pieces.

How has playing with Wendy influenced your work?

Through her, I've met all these string players who graduated from Curtis, where all the great string players come from. It's a very interesting world for me. In the past, I've played with some very interesting musicians, but when they play my music they're thinking about a different kind of music than what I've written for Wendy. So I tell people now that my new frontier is classical music.

Obviously, you're kidding about the 'new frontier.' Do people really see you as some kind of a classical music newcomer?

I've been classified as an experimental music composer for years and years, though I've written string quartets, operas and symphonies. I guess I'm still not in that "golden circle" of chamber music players. I went to the Peabody Conservatory since the time I was 8 years old. I went to Juilliard, and I studied with Nadia Boulanger. Since then I found out that a lot of people in the classical music world thought that I could not even read music.

Why is that, do you think?

It's because musicians live in their own music ghetto, the same as I do. We tend to do shorthand mental descriptions of each other.

What's funny is that I grew up listening to classical music. It was my father's favorite music, and as a boy, in Baltimore, I got to know the classical repertoire really, really well because my father and I used to listen to it together. Those are some of my strongest childhood memories.

Does being a performer deeply inform the composing?

Yes. When you look at music from the point of view of a performer, you have a different view of things. It took me a long time to understand that. In point of fact, composers can get lost into a kind of cerebral world where music exists independently of audiences and performers.

Call Bee arts critic Edward Ortiz, (916) 321-1071.