Charles Fox

Charles Fox, a prolific and versatile composer, has compiled an impressive list of musical credits in the field of popular as well as concert music. His work includes scores to over 50 television films and motion pictures, the ballet score A Song for Dead Warriors, and the orchestral suite A Thousand Heroes. Whether writing in genres of film, vocal, or orchestral music, his compositions are consistently marked by a dramatic intensity and emotional forthrightness. In 1992, he was presented with the BMI Richard Kirk Award for outstanding life achievement.

Born in the Bronx in 1940, Charles Fox began his musical training on the piano at an early age. After graduating from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, the young composer went to Paris where he studied with Nadia Boulanger. Upon his return to New York, he composed and arranged for such salsa legends as Tito Puente and Ray Barretto. He went on to write station-break music for the Tonight Show before eventually scoring his first film The Incident.

In the mid-60s, Fox studied electronic music at Columbia University with Vladimir Ussachevsky — an experience which led him to be one of the first to write electronic scores for films, including the 1970 production of First Class with the French mime Marcel Marceau. Collaborating on Roger Vadim’s Barbarella led to the scoring of his first major hit Goodbye Columbus. In 1973, Fox won an Emmy award for his score to the television film Love, American Style, a Grammy for the international hit “Killing Me Softly With His Song”, and the Young New York Film Critics Award for Jim Croce’s “I Got A Name” from The Last American Hero.

His works have also earned him two Oscar nominations, one for “Ready to Take a Chance Again” from the film Foul Play and the other for “Richard’s Window” from The Other Side of the Mountain. Other credits include film scores for Nine To Five and The Gods Must Be Crazy II, and the themes for the television shows Little Darling, The Love Boat, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and The Paper Chase (Emmy Nomination). In November 1993, the American Friends of Assah Harofeh Medical Center presented Fox with their 1993 Humanitarian of the Year Award for his contribution to international charity through entertainment. Cut to the Chase, a program of film clips and music composed and conducted by Charles Fox, will be presented by the Columbus Symphony on March 20 and 21, 1997.

Fox’s orchestral writing produced the internationally acclaimed ballet A Song for Dead Warriors. Based on the life of Richard Oakes, who led the Native American takeover of Alcatraz Island, the work was commissioned and premiered by the San Francisco Ballet in 1979 with choreography by Michael Smuin. In 1984, it was aired on PBS as part of the Ballet in America series and the production won an Emmy Award for Best Classical Show. The Dance Theatre of Harlem performed it in 1993 at Lincoln Center’s New York State Theater and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C.

In May of 2003, Michael Smuin’s “Zorro” premiered in San Francisco to rave reviews and sold-out houses. Charles Fox wrote the score for this ballet that has whip-cracking action, adventure and romance, a strong dose of cartoon humor, Pirandellian logic and absolutely dashing dancing. The San Francisco Chronicle said of the music: “The taped orchestral score is by Charles Fox, whose credits range from the hit song “Killing Me Softly” to Smuin’s ballet “A Song for Dead Warriors.” It is eclectic, vibrant dance music, recalling Prokofiev in the waltzes, Bernstein in the mambos and Stravinsky almost everywhere else. His ballet score boasts passages of sheer musical delight.”