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“Begin thinking about the range of the instruments,” Fuchs tells her. “What will give depth to the sound? The bassoon goes down to B flat, so use it to enrich the sonority in the bass. In the opposite direction, the French horn is like a yellow highlighter. As you did with the oboe and flute, use the upper register in the French horn. I loved it.”

In guiding his students toward a deeper understanding of the creative process, music composition professor Fuchs is passing along his experiences in the music industry, experiences that are more real than the illusions of overnight success depicted on shows like “American Idol,” but only slightly less star-studded.

Fuchs first came to music in church, singing in the choir at the age of 10. Piano lessons soon followed, then school band at Piper High School in Sunrise, Florida. The band’s new director, Bentley Shellahamer, became his Mr. Holland — the inspirational teacher in the 1995 Richard Dreyfuss film “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” It was Shellahamer who set Fuchs on the path to becoming one of America’s finest composers, with four Grammy nominations for his contemporary classical recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra.

When Fuchs told Shellahamer that he wanted to become a composer, the band director wrote out the ranges for all the instruments in the band on a sheet of manuscript paper that Fuchs still has. He encouraged his student to write prolifically, promising to play anything he wrote.

“And he did,” says Fuchs. “He played the first piece, which won a student composition award from the Florida Bandmasters Association.”

After earning a music degree from the University of Miami, Fuchs hoped to study at The Juilliard School in New York City under the masters of American symphonic music — Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti, and Roger Sessions. He immersed himself in their music and wrote audition compositions for band, not orchestra. The Juilliard judges advised him to expand his knowledge, compose an orchestral work, and reapply.

Disappointed but determined, Fuchs sought advice from three composers he had written to while studying in Miami — Aaron Copland, William Schuman, and Stephen Sondheim. His letters asked about particular pieces of their music and the decisions the composers made about formal structure and instrumentation.

“They took my questions seriously and responded to the letters. To a person, each of them said when you come to New York, we’ll get together,” Fuchs says. “You learn that the real greats are big enough to lend a helping hand.”

He spoke with Schuman, the former president of Juilliard and Lincoln Center, and met with Sondheim just after “Sweeney Todd” opened on Broadway. At Patelson’s Music House, the well-known music store that used to sit across from the stage door at Carnegie Hall, he told owner Joseph Patelson that he would like a job.

Two weeks later, a letter arrived from Patelson offering him one. Later the same week, Schuman wrote to say he had arranged for Fuchs to take lessons from Stanley Wolfe, then-director of the Extension Division at Juilliard. For the next year, Fuchs worked at the music store six days a week and studied at night with Wolfe, beginning work on an orchestral composition.

This time his audition earned him admission to Juilliard, where he earned Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees.

After Juilliard, Fuchs spent a year as an assistant dean at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts before returning to New York for an eight-year stint as dean of students at the Manhattan School of Music. In 1998 he became director of the School of Music at the University of Oklahoma and oversaw completion of a new music center.

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Fuchs continued to write music but felt he had not yet found his own voice. He decided to take on a large orchestral work and devote as much time as necessary to finding his writing voice. Over the course of two years that voice emerged as he composed the 18-minute “An American Place.” In 2003 he completed “Eventide,” a concerto for English horn and orchestra, for Thomas Stacy of the New York Philharmonic.

While several of his ensemble compositions had been recorded by the American String Quartet and principals from the New York Philharmonic, Fuchs now was ready to record his orchestral work.

He reached out to JoAnn Falletta, a Juilliard classmate and rising star in the conducting world, to ask if she would be interested in conducting the new works, as well as “Out of the Dark,” the first of Fuchs’ works that Falletta had conducted while they were students. Her response was immediate: She accepted his invitation and mentioned she was going to be recording with the London Symphony Orchestra and might have time to add other sessions for his compositions.

With support from then-president of the University of Oklahoma David L. Boren and his development staff, funding was raised, and six months later Fuchs was in London recording with Falletta and the LSO. In quick order, their work was accepted by Naxos, the world’s largest classical record label, for its new American Classics Series, aimed at promoting solo discs by composers, and “Eventide” was nominated for two Grammy Awards.

“Nobody could believe a first disc by a virtually unknown composer would get two nominations, but it did.” Fuchs says. “We didn’t win, but that’s what started it all.”