Noted Composer, Tulare
Native Roger Nixon Dies

Tulare - Tulare native Roger Nixon, a well-known composer and music educator who taught 30 years at San Francisco State College, died Oct. 13 at a Burlingame hospital.

No services were held for the 88-year-old musician, who died at Mills Peninsula Hospital from complications of leukemia.

A prolific composer, Mr. Nixon's compositions for band, wind ensembles, orchestra, opera, keyboard and chamber and choral group are played throughout the world.

His musical excellence earned him a Phelan Award, the Neil A. Kjos Memorial Award, the ABA/Ostwald Band Composition Award and five grants from the National Endowments of the Arts.

Prior to his induction into the Tulare Union High School Hall of Fame in December 2007, Mr. Nixon told the Tulare Voice he sometimes ditched school at Tulare Union – where he was a member of the Class of 1938 – because he wanted to spend more time playing the clarinet.

“I was just obsessed with it,” he said, adding that school officials at one time even threatened to put his mother in jail because of his absences.

Mr. Nixon was born in Tulare on Aug. 8, 1921, to Posey G. Nixon, owner of Leggett's Department Store in downtown Tulare, and Betty D. Nixon, a gifted thespian.

His formal musical education began at the old Central Grammar School under the tutelage of Harold Bartlett, whom Mr. Nixon described in 2007 as “a very gifted teacher” who taught students how to compose music, as well as play.

During his high school years, Mr. Nixon attended summer school in Pacific Grove, where he met Frank Mancini, a clarinetist with the John Philip Sousa Band who later became his teacher and mentor at Modesto Junior College. When he was a high school senior, Mr. Nixon earned the first chair in the all-state orchestra.
His friends and classmates remember well his love of music in high school.

“I always expected that somehow music would play a very important part of his life,” said Gerry Soults, a fellow member of the Class of 1938. “He was in the band and in the orchestra and I was happy to learn he really went on to make his mark in the music world.”

Jim Leonard, a friend since he and Mr. Nixon were third graders at Wilson School, recalled one evening when they were suppose to take two girls to a dance and his friend was about an hour late because he was listening to the San Francisco Symphony on the radio.

“Roger would not do anything until that concert was over,” Mr. Leonard said.

College Years

While studying in Modesto, Mr. Nixon won a national contest for a piece he wrote for a woodwind quartet and was strongly urged by his music theory teacher and by the principal adjudicator for the contest, Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, to attend the University of California, Berkeley.

Although still an undergraduate, Cal officials allowed him to attend graduate seminars led by English composer Arthur Bliss and Swiss-Jewish composer Ernest Bloch, whom Mr. Nixon said were very influential in his career.

After serving in the Navy during World War II, he returned to Tulare, where he conducted the United Methodist Church choir, which he said “was the best in town.”
He later returned to Cal, where he earned his master's degree and later a doctorate, studying with Bloch and Roger Sessions. He also would travel to the University of Southern California to study with Arnold Schoenberg.

Mr. Nixon taught at Modesto Junior College from 1951 to 1959 and joined the music department at San Francisco State in the fall of 1960. He retired in 1990.
He told the Tulare Voice that one of the highlights of his career was meeting Josef Krips, who conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the premiere of two of his works, Mooney's Grove Suite” in 1968 and the critically acclaimed “Viola Concerto” in 1970.

Fueling his reputation as one of the world's leading composers for bands was the decision of the University of Michigan band to take the first piece he had written for band to Russia.

“This carried a lot of wallop,” Mr. Nixon said. “It helped tremendously.”
In 1976, he helped to write and arrange music for the American Bicentennial celebration and also composed pieces that reflect the California experience. Among them are Festival Fanfare March,” which is often performed by military bands, “Fiesta del Pacifico” and “Chamarita!” which reflects the imagery and joyful spirit of the Holy Ghost celebrations held in California's Portuguese-American communities each year.

Mr. Leonard, who now lives in Hanford and kept in close contact with Mr. Nixon and his family over the many years, said he almost has a complete collection of everything recorded that was written by his friend.

“He always sent me everything that he recorded,” he said. “I'm going to give that to the [Tulare] museum.” The Music Department at UC Berkeley has a complete collection, he added.

Mr. Nixon's survivors include: his wife, Nancy, San Mateo; three sons; two daughters; 14 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

The above story is the property of The Valley Voice Newspaper and may not be reprinted without explicit permission in writing from the publisher.