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To honor, recognize, and celebrate the life of Mr. Donald Harris and to extend our sincerest condolences to his family and friends on the occasion of his passing, Tuesday, March 29, 2016.
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WHEREAS, Mr. Donald Harris, died peacefully on Tuesday, March 29, 2016, surrounded by family and some of his dearest friends; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Harris was an American composer born April 7, 1931, in St. Paul, Minnesota to the late Barney and Hattie Harris; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Harris earned his bachelors and master's degrees in composition from The University of Michigan where he was a student of Ross Lee Finney; continued his studies with Lukas Foss, Boris Blacher, Nadia Boulanger and Max Deutsch; and later received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from The Ohio State University in June 2012; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Harris lived in Paris from 1954 until 1968, where among other things, he was a music consultant to the United States Information Service - producing the city's first postwar Festival of Contemporary American Music; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Harris served as an administrator at the New England Conservatory of Music from 1967-1977, Dean of the Hartt School of Music located at the University of Hartford from 1977-1988, and later became Dean of the College of the Arts and professor of music at the Ohio State University from 1988-1997; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Harris, after a thirty-year career as a senior-level administrator in higher education and the arts, stepped down as Dean and rejoined the OSU faculty in composition; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Harris was the past president of The International Council of Fine Arts Deans (ICFAD); served on the board of the Ballet Met, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the Martin Luther King Center, and the Johnstone Fund for New Music, where he was twice honored with the OSU School of Music's Distinguished Service Award “in recognition of his trailblazing contributions and dedicated service that he provided to the music profession and the ar...
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