CHARLES WILSON

A BRIEF BIO

 

DR. CHARLES M. WILSON is a native of Toronto, Ontario, where he was born in 1931. He has been composer, conductor, organist, and teacher. He received both a Bachelor of Music Education degree and a Doctoral degree in composition from the University of Toronto. During thirty-five years as a choral conductor, he held appointments with the Bach-Elgar Choir of Hamilton, chorus master with the Canadian Opera Company, and as a founder and director of the Guelph Light Opera Company and Oratorio Choir. For nine years he was Professor of Music at the University of Guelph. In 1988 he became Composer-in-Residence at the University of Guelph. In 1993 he retired and moved to British Columbia where he and his wife, a contralto, have been giving many song recitals including both Wilson’s most recent vocal works and other 20th century repertoire.

 

Not surprisingly, Wilson’s compositional activity is centered around vocal works; song cycles, oratorios, a trilogy of cantatas for choir, soloists and string orchestra, four operas: HELOISE AND ABELARD for the Canadian Opera Company, PSYCHO RED for the Guelph Spring Festival, THE SUMMONING OF EVERYMAN and KAMOURASKA as well as symphonies, concertos, sonatas performed across Canada and for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

 

Wilson’s composition teachers have included Godfrey Ridout, Lukas Foss, Carlos Chavez and Aaron Copland, (the latter three at Tanglewood Music School). More recent influences in his musical thinking and style are Stockhausen, Carter, and the newly developing field of electro-acoustic music.

 

 

 

 

 

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