14 Facts About Lukas Foss

Lukas Foss was a German-American composer, pianist, and conductor.

Lukas Foss began piano and theory lessons with Julius Goldstein [Herford] in Berlin at the age of six.

Lukas Foss's parents were Hilde and the philosopher and scholar Martin Foss.

Lukas Foss moved with his family to Paris in 1933, where he studied piano with Lazare Levy, composition with Noel Gallon, orchestration with Felix Wolfes, and flute with Marcel Moyse.

Lukas Foss studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, with Isabelle Vengerova, Rosario Scalero and Fritz Reiner.

Lukas Foss studied with Serge Koussevitzky during the summers from 1939 to 1943 at the Berkshire Music Center and, as a special student, composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale University from 1939 to 1940.

Lukas Foss was appointed professor of music at UCLA in 1953, replacing Arnold Schoenberg.

Lukas Foss founded the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts in 1963 while at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Over six separate years from 1961 to 1987, Lukas Foss was the music director of the Ojai Music Festival.

Lukas Foss was a professor of music, theory, and composition at Boston University beginning in 1991.

Lukas Foss is grouped in the "Boston school" along with Arthur Berger, Irving Fine, Alexei Haieff, Harold Shapero, and Claudio Spies.

Lukas Foss was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.

In 1951 Lukas Foss married Cornelia Brendel, an artist and painter who was born in Berlin in 1931, the daughter of art historian Otto Brendel and Maria Weigert Brendel.

Lukas Foss, who had Parkinson's disease in his final years, died at his home in Manhattan on February 1,2009, aged 86, of a heart attack.