'He constructs his music so that the unknowing listener should not be able to distinguish it from that of his 'canonized' white contemporaries,' Clague writes, citing influences from Stravinsky, Debussy and the serialist school of composers. Mark Clague, who wrote the entry on George Walker for the International Dictionary of Black Composers, points to elements of race and politics in Walker's compositions.

'The other aspect, of course, is that if I were not black, I would have had a far wider dispersion of my music and more performances.' 'I've benefited from being a black composer in the sense that when there are symposiums given of music by black composers, I would get performances by orchestras that otherwise would not have done the works,' Walker said.

In a 1987 interview with broadcaster Bruce Duffie, Walker said there are two sides to that label. Walker is often identified as an 'African-American' composer instead of simply an American composer. Sad to say that even the work that earned him the Pulitzer has not graced the concert hall nearly enough.' 'Walker deserved many more performances than he has received thus far. 'We have a great deal of work to do regarding orchestra programming of composers of color,' Mumford says. Walker's reputation as a composer of works for orchestras like the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Boston Symphony slowly grew, but Mumford says Walker's fame was hard-won. 'He could bring anything he wanted to show her at lessons.' 'She was so impressed with his musicianship that she waived the regular requirements she made of students,' Mumford says. Mumford likes to recall a story about Walker's Paris years with Boulanger. (Her other students ranged from Aaron Copland to Quincy Jones.) In the late 1950s, he traveled to Paris to study for two years with the famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He then enrolled at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied piano with Rudolf Serkin and composition with Samuel Barber, graduating in 1945. In 1937, he entered Oberlin College in Ohio on a scholarship and graduated at age 18. At 14, Walker gave his first public recital at Washington's Howard University. to a father from the West Indies and a mother who started him off with piano lessons at age five. George Theophilus Walker was born Jin Washington, D.C. Lilacs for voice and orchestra, set to a text by Walt Whitman, is a moving meditation on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. In 1996, Walker broke new ground again when he became the first African-American composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music.

In the year 1945 alone, he was the first African-American pianist to play a recital at New York's Town Hall, the first black instrumentalist to play solo with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the first black graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Walker was a trailblazing man of 'firsts,' and not just because of the Pulitzer. 'His style evolved over the years his earlier works, some written while still a student, embodied an impressive clarity and elegance.' 'His music is always characterized by a great sense of dignity, which is how he always comported himself,' says composer Jeffrey Mumford, who, as a music professor at Lorain County Community College in Ohio, uses examples of Walker's music in his classes. His nearly 100 compositions range broadly, from intricately orchestrated symphonic works and concertos to intimate songs and solo piano pieces. Walker's music was firmly rooted in the modern classical tradition, but also drew from African-American spirituals and jazz. Gregory Walker, the composer's son, said his father died after complications of a kidney ailment Thursday at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, N.J. Walker's death was first announced to NPR by one of his family members, Karen Schaefer. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, pianist and educator George Walker has died at the age of 96. Composer George Walker takes a bow at a performance of his Pulitzer winning piece, Lilacs, in California in1996.

George walker composer