Tui St. George Tucker (1924-2004)

Tui St. George Tucker was born in 1924 California and attended Occidental College from 1941 to 1944. In 1946, she moved to New York, where she began to establish herself as both a recorder player and a composer. In her compositions, St. George Tucker took inspiration from plainsong and Baroque music while experimenting with modern techniques and tonalities. Her virtuosity on the recorder is highlighted by her use of microtonality, extended techniques, and multiphonics in compositions for the instrument. St. George Tucker is also known for her compositions for keyboard instruments (both microtonal and traditionally tuned) and for choral ensembles.

St. George Tucker’s extramusical inspiration often came from her summer retreats to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her life partner, poet Vera Lachmann, founded Camp Catawba in 1944 to provide cultural experiences for boys, and St. George Tucker spent many summers as the camp music director between 1947 and the camp’s closure in 1970. She inherited the camp grounds from Lachmann in 1985 and lived there until her death in 2004, during which time she continued to compose and conduct local ensembles.