Charles Wuorinen - Biography

Biography

Wuorinen was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. His father, John H. Wuorinen, was chairman of the history department at Columbia University and a noted scholar of Scandinavian affairs who also worked for the Office of Strategic Services and was the author of five books on his native Finland. His mother, Alfhild Kalijarvi, received her M.A. in biology from Smith College. Wuorinen excelled academically, graduating from Trinity School (New York City) as valedictorian in 1956; he later received his B.A. (1961) and M.A. (1963) in music from Columbia University. Early supporters included Jacques Barzun and Edgard Varèse. He lives in New York City and Long Valley, New Jersey. Wuorinen is married to his longtime partner and manager Howard Stokar.

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