Ludovico Einaudi

In the 21st century, Ludovico Einaudi’s plaintive post-minimalist sound became the omnipresent style of modern classical music in popular culture. Born in 1955 in Turin, Italy, the composer/pianist absorbed a wide range of art and pop music styles while attending the Milan Conservatory. Although his primary mentors were staunch avant-gardists—Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and most crucially Luciano Berio—Einaudi gravitated toward a simpler and more accessible style, shaped by the spare and propulsive sound of American minimalist music, which he first came in contact with in the '80s. Over the subsequent few decades, Einaudi developed a highly personal take on Philip Glass-esque minimalism, based on a comfortingly familiar harmonic language and catchy, gently mutating melodic cells that draw inspiration from Romantic and Impressionist music, New Age, world music and pop. Intimate piano outings like 2004’s Una Mattina and the grander-scale 2006 Divenire—backed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra—solidified a pattern of crossover chart success in Europe and helped bolster a thriving touring career. Einaudi’s music also received increasingly prominent placements in wide-release films (notable examples include 2011’s Intouchables and 2020’s Nomadland and The Father). In the 2020s, Einaudi became the most streamed classical artist of all time, towering above Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.