Frederick Tillis

Frederick Tillis was among the most prominent African American composers, with a style reflecting the influence of various European composers as well as the jazz with which he grew up. Tillis, an influential educator, taught for many years at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Tillis was born in Galveston, Texas, on January 5, 1930. He was raised by his teenage mother and her parents, and although the family had few resources, his mother, Bernice, encouraged her son's burgeoning musical talent. He ogled the instruments in the windows of Galveston music stores, finally finding the money to buy a bugle, and then he was able to join the drum and bugle corps at segregated Central High School. He joined the school's jazz band and was able to make the transition to the trumpet; the band director suggested that he also take up the saxophone, a combination pursued by jazz great Benny Carter, whom Tillis idolized. During World War II, with many members of the military passing through Galveston clubs, Tillis was able to earn money performing with bands under the name Baby Tillis. His mother's church warned her about his late hours, but she continued to support him. After the war's end, he earned a music scholarship to historically black Wiley College, and after graduating, he was immediately hired as the school's band director. Tillis hungered for additional education, however, and with money from the G.I. Bill, he had the means to pursue it. Hoping to escape segregation, he moved north to the University of Iowa. Tillis enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, interrupting his studies, but returned to Iowa, earning master's and doctoral degrees there. He taught at a succession of historically African American schools: Wiley College, Grambling College (now University), and Kentucky State University, from 1967 to 1969. Then he was recruited to join the faculty at UMass Amherst, where he taught from 1970 until his retirement in 1997. "If I made my living off royalties from my music, we would be living in the poor house," he told Contemporary Black Biography. In later years he issued a dozen volumes of poetry. The composer of more than 125 works, Tillis merged jazz and classical idioms in his music, which includes orchestral, choral, chamber, and vocal works. Especially characteristic are his large choral works, including Freedom, written as a response to the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and concertos for various instruments that set a soloist against a jazz orchestra. He composed a sequence of 12 works with the title "Spiritual Fantasy," mostly for soloist and orchestra or piano; the last was for string quartet. Several of these have been recorded. Tillis died in Amherst, Massachusetts, on May 3, 2020. ~ James Manheim