Charles Fussell

Biography

Charles Clement Fussell (born February 14, 1938, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina) is an American composer and conductor of contemporary classical music. He has composed six symphonies and three operas. His symphony Wilde for solo baritone and orchestra, based on the life of Oscar Wilde and premiered by the Newton Symphony Orchestra and the baritone Sanford Sylvan in 1990, was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Music. He received a citation and award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1992.

Fussell received advanced degrees in composition and conducting from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Thomas Canning and Bernard Rogers. He received a Fulbright grant to study at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, where he worked with Boris Blacher. He also attended the Bayreuth masterclasses of Friedelind Wagner. In 1964 he received a Ford Foundation grant to be a composer-in-residence in the Newton, Massachusetts public school system. He was an assistant and close friend of the composer Virgil Thomson. He served as the president of the Thomson Foundation for many years.

Fussell has served on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the North Carolina School of the Arts (1976–1977), Boston University (1983–2003), and Rutgers University.

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