Stanley "Spike" Glasser (28 February 1926 – 5 August 2018), was a South African-born British composer and academic who settled in Britain in 1963.
Born on 28 February 1926 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the elder son of first-generation Jewish immigrants from Lithuania,[1][2] he first came to the UK in 1950 to study with Benjamin Frankel and (from 1952) Mátyás Seiber, then read music at King's College Cambridge (1955–1958).
In 1959, he was the musical director of King Kong by Todd Matshikiza and Harry Bloom, based on the life of boxer Ezekiel Dlamini.
[5] However, Glasser was forced to flee South Africa's apartheid regime in 1963 due to his relationship with black jazz singer Maud Damons (who had been in the cast of Mr Paljas).
Other works include the choral cantata Zonkizizwe in 1991, a Magnificat & Nunc dimittis for the Choir of St George's Chapel, Windsor, in 1998, and Bric-à-brac, a series of short pieces for piano written between 1985 and 2000, performed by Andrew Ball.