Exclusive Q&A with GFS Music Director Charles Peltz, on Musician, Composer, Conductor, and Friend, Gunther Schuller.
Gunther Schuller Biography:
Gunther Schuller was born in New York on November 22, 1925. His professional music career began as a French horn player, performing with the American Ballet Theater as a teenager, as principal horn in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1943-1945), and with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (1945-1959). He performed under legendary maestros of the 20th century, including Toscanini, Stokowski, Walter, Reiner, Szell, Mitropoulos, and Doráti. Schuller also played French horn on Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool and Porgy and Bess recordings, and composed and/or conducted for jazz greats John Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, J. J. Johnson, George Russell, and Joe Lovano, among others. He also had significant interactions with Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, and Eric Dolphy.
Schuller composed more than 200 works (and created dozens of arrangements), spanning many musical genres, including solo works, orchestral and wind ensemble pieces, chamber music, opera, and jazz. Among Schuller’s orchestral works are Symphony (1965), Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (1959), and An Arc Ascending (1996). His large-scale work, Of Reminiscences and Reflections, was composed as a tribute to his wife of 44 years, Marjorie Black, and it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. He wrote important concertos for frequently-neglected instruments such as saxophone, bassoon, contrabassoon, organ, and double bass. He composed maverick pieces such as Concertino for Jazz Quartet and Orchestra (1959) and Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk (1960), and he reassembled, re-composed, arranged, and conducted Charles Mingus’ magnum opus Epitaph (1962/1989).
Schuller conducted professional orchestras and various ensembles in a wide-ranging repertoire around the globe for much of his career. His guest-conducting included leading such ensembles as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Minnesota Orchestras, San Francisco Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, Radio Philharmonic of Hannover, Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, as well as the Mingus Orchestra and other American and European jazz orchestras. He co-founded the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and held titled positions with the Spokane Symphony and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston. Schuller’s discography as a conductor spans many classical and jazz genres and is unusually broad in repertoire and style.
As an educator, Schuller first taught at the Manhattan School of Music before moving to Yale University as Professor of Composition. He was also a central figure at the innovative School of Jazz in Lenox (1959-1960). Schuller began teaching at the Berkshire Music Center (at Tanglewood) in 1963 at the request of Aaron Copland, and subsequently served as its artistic director from 1969-1984. He served as the artistic director of The Festival at Sandpoint from 1985 to 1998. From 1967-1977 Schuller served as president of the New England Conservatory, where he formalized NEC’s commitment to jazz by establishing the first degree-granting jazz program at a major classical conservatory, instituting the Third-Stream department (he invented the concept of Third-Stream music)—later named the Contemporary Improvisation department—to explore the musical genres where classical jazz and other music come together.
Schuller earned three Grammy Awards: Best Album Notes for Foot Lifters: A Century of American Marches (1976) and for Smithsonian Collection of Big Band Jazz (1985), and Best Chamber Music Performance (1974) for Joplin: The Red Back Book, his landmark recording with the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble that helped launch a nationally popular Ragtime revival. Schuller was the recipient of the William Schuman Award (1988), the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award (1991), the Gold Medal for Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1997), the Downbeat Lifetime Achievement Award, and an inaugural membership in the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2008 and was awarded the 2015 Edward MacDowell Medal.
Schuller wrote numerous articles and six books on the topics of horn playing, jazz (two essential histories), conducting, arts and aesthetics, and, in 2011, volume one of his autobiography, Gunther Schuller: A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty. Despite illness, he never stopped composing, conducting, writing, and being immersed in music. Schuller died at the age of 89 in Boston on June 21, 2015.
It is hard to imagine another 20th-century musician who gave so much of his mind, heart, and soul—with the truest and deepest possible devotion—to the breadth of classical and jazz music. In addition to his vast work as a composer, conductor, educator, and author/historian, he founded and led a publishing company (Margun/Gunmar Music) and a recording label (GM Recordings); both enterprises were dedicated to championing unsung composers and performers in classical and jazz music.
Gunther Alexander Schuller was an idealist in all of his endeavors. He supported everything and everyone he believed in. To many, he was the beacon of the possibilities of that the seemingly humble word “musician” meant: unfailing devotion to art and artists, exalted levels of musicianship, a passion to share all that he knew, and humility in the face of the master musicians of the past and of his own lifetime.
It was poignant that he passed away on Father’s Day 2015 because he was not only a “musical father” to an unfathomable number of musicians all over the world, but also a Father of American Music in the 20th and 21st centuries. The vastness of his contributions to American classical and jazz music in all its various forms is—without exaggeration—staggering. It is a legacy that the United States and indeed the world will continue to celebrate, study, reflect upon, and admire for generations.
Special Feature Q&A with Music Director Charles Peltz:
GFS: What is your personal connection to Gunther Schuller and his connection to the Glens Falls Symphony?
CP: I knew Gunther well in the last ten years of his life. We worked closely on recordings together, and he guest-conducted the GFS on November 19. 2006. Gunther also guest-conducted the NEC Wind Ensemble every year at my invitation. He actually wrote a piece for the NEC Wind Ensemble, which he called “the best third-stream piece I have written.” My wife, Kirstin, and I share many fond memories with him and his wife, Marjorie Black Schuller, over the years.
GFS: Gunther is often referred to as an idealist, a beacon of light and possibility, with a passion to share with others all he knew. How have those principles influenced you as a musician, conductor, and educator?
CP: Gunther influenced everyone he came into contact with. He was a real taskmaster, but always to great results. For me, there is a Schuller musical principle that is also a valuable human principle. Musicians often have a particular performance aspect they most value: maybe it’s tight ensemble, or maybe it’s in-tune-ness, or maybe it’s phrasing. For Gunther, it was balance. He was truly obsessed with every note being heard. In editing recordings, he would choose the “take” where maybe the intonation was obviously weak, but the balance was perfect. That is a life lesson – to make sure one hears every voice around you; that the perspectives of others are balanced one with another.
GFS: Why did you decide to program this work for the 2025-26 GFS season?
CP: 2025 marks Gunther Schuller’s centenary (1925-2025), and as President of the Gunther Schuller Society, I wanted to set an example by taking the occasion to program his music and remind the world of its importance. Of course, it is also a truly great work!
GFS: What is the Gunther Schuller Society, and what is your role within it?
CP: At Gunther’s 2015 passing, three of his colleagues – Saxophonist Ken Radnofsky (a past GFS guest artist) and composer and NEC icon John Heiss, and I- felt the need to ensure that Gunther’s legacy would continue.
I volunteered to start the society and be its president. Our activities and projects include producing with NEC an annual Gunther Schuller legacy concert, as well as a website that puts up current news about Schuller performances or new editions of his work. We are working with the Library of Congress in organizing Gunther’s vast archives to be used by scholars and musicians for years to come.
GFS: What impact and influence did Mr. Schuller have on Jazz Music and Jazz Music Education?
He wrote the definitive books on both early jazz and the swing era, so those are foundational reading for any student of jazz. In 1967, upon becoming the NEC President, he started the first degree-awarding jazz program in the country, which seems unbelievable that a milestone had to wait until the 1960s. Probably his largest contribution was the idea of a “Third Stream” in music, where the two musical streams of classical and jazz would come together to form an integrated music. That has sparked the imagination of countless composers since and also encouraged students of both classical and jazz music to learn about, and how to perform, the music of the “other “ genre.
GFS: What sets Gunther Schuller apart from composers today?
It’s the third-stream idea. Also, he was a 12-tone composer. That means he would use all twelve tones within the octave (all the black and white keys) as he created melodies and harmonies. Usually, that music is pretty tough going for the casual listener. But he discovered a pattern – a “row” – of twelve tones that would often sound to the listener as if it were a sequence of notes like a composer whose music is more immediately attractive. He called this his “magic row,” and he used it almost exclusively.
GFS: What are you personally looking forward to most about next Sunday’s “Sound Canvases” performance?
Having the images of the paintings projected during the music so the audience can find some connection between the art that inspired Gunther and the music he wrote.
And … that somewhere Gunther is listening and is pleased that his music is still heard and experienced.
Sunday, November 9, 2025, 4 pm, South Glens Falls High School Auditorium: “Sound Canvases”
Click here to purchase tickets
To learn more about Gunther Schuller and the Gunther Schuller Society, visit their website: https://www.guntherschullersociety.org/
This concert is sponsored by:
-Arrow Bank
-New York State Council for the Arts
-The Glens Falls Chronicle
-Finch Paper
-JUST Water
-The Queensbury Hotel
-Keena Staffing