(Augustus)
(b Nashua, NH, May 14, 1931; d Middletown, CT, Dec 1, 2021). American composer and educator.
He was educated at Yale (BA 1954) and Brandeis (MFA 1960), where his teachers included Howard Boatwright, Arthur Berger, Irving Fine, and Shapero; he also studied under Copland and Foss at the Berkshire Music Center (1958, 1959). After two years in Rome on a Fulbright fellowship, Lucier joined the Brandeis faculty in 1963 as director of the choral union; later he was head of the electronic music studio. He was a cofounder of the Sonic Arts Union, music director of the Viola Farber Dance Company (1972–7), and a fellow of the DAAD Kunstlerprogramm in Berlin (1990). He received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and the NEA. In 1970 he moved to Wesleyan University, where he was later appointed John Spencer Camp Professor of Music. At Wesleyan, he trained a number of prominent experimental composers before his retirement in ...
