Richard Wilson
Professor (Theory and Composition)
Office: Skinner Hall
Box: 489
Phone: (845) 437-7326
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A.B. Harvard, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa; M.A., Rutgers University.
Born in Cleveland, Wilson studied piano with Leonard Shure and cello with Ernst Silberstein. Much of his early musical study, including composition, took place at the Cleveland Music School Settlement. Upon completing his bachelor's at Harvard, he received the Frank Huntington Beebe Award which afforded him the opportunity to study piano in Munich with Friedrich Wuhrer and composition in Rome with Robert Moevs, his composition professor at Harvard.
Wilson has composed over 70 works, ranging in medium from solo tuba to full orchestra, which have been played in major halls around the world. Among those who have performed his music are Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jan Opalach, Ursula Oppens, Fred Sherry, Walter Trampler, the Muir Quartet, the Delme Quartet, the Composers Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony under Herbert Blomstedt, the London Philharmonic, the Pro-Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston and the American Symphony all under Leon Botstein, and the Orquesta Sinfonica de Colombia under Luis Biava.
Wilson has received numerous awards, including the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy--Institute of Arts and Letters, the Creative Arts Award in Music from the City of Cleveland, the Stoeger Award from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a Guggenheim Fellowship under which he composed his first opera--Athelred the Unready. He is composer-in-residence with the American Symphony, where he gives pre-concert lectures. A member of the Vassar faculty since 1966, Wilson currently chairs the music department and holds an endowed professorship, the Mary Conover Mellon Professor of Music.