Composer Robert Baksa (February 6, 1938 - June 24, 2023) was a creative and prolific artist of exceptional lyric gifts, who wrote over six hundred instrumental and keyboard works as well as art songs, choral music, and operas. He worked in his own unique neoclassical style, and the craftsmanship of his tonally oriented music garnered respect even during the years when a conservative aesthetic was out of fashion.
Born in New York City in 1938 to Hungarian parents, Baksa grew up in Tucson and began writing music as a teenager. He attended the University of Arizona earning a Bachelor of Arts in Composition, where he studied with Henry Johnson and Robert McBride. He later studied with Lukas Foss. Having won several competitions early on in his career, he went on to receive a Martha Baird Rockefeller grant and a Lincoln Center commission. His popular compositions include Nonet for Winds and Strings; song cycles of A.E. Housman, Emily Dickinson, and Ambrose Bierce; nine Shakespeare Madrigals; Herrick Songs for Vocal Quartet with Piano; Octet for Woodwinds; Festival Music for Brass Quintet; and various quintets for Wind Instruments and String Quartet. His opera Red Carnations, commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, has been widely used as an introduction to opera for audiences of all ages. His art songs are often discussed in studies of American art song, and his choral pieces are performed the world over.
Baksa’s works have been performed by such groups as the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the Boehm and Virtuosi Quintets, the Sylvan Winds, the New Jersey Chamber Music Society, the Queens Chamber Band, harpsichordists Igor Kipnis and Elaine Comparone, oboist Burt Lucarelli, saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, and cellist Sharon Robinson. His music has been featured at National Flute Association and Double Reed Society Conventions, the Caramoor and Newport Music Festivals, and at the Library of Congress.
Baksa passed away on June 24th, 2023 in Hudson, NY at the age of 85, following a brief illness.
