Richard Dufallo; Musician Advocated Modern Works

Richard Dufallo, one of America’s significant champions of contemporary music, died Friday at his home in Denton, Texas. He was 67. The cause of death was stomach cancer.

Although best known as a conductor and educator, Dufallo began his career as a clarinetist. When he enrolled at UCLA in the 1950s, he was thought such an exceptional talent that composer and conductor Lukas Foss immediately invited Dufallo to join his cutting-edge Improvisation Chamber Ensemble. Taken under Foss’ wing, Dufallo later became associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic from 1962-67, while Foss was its music director. “Richard was a very talented man,” Foss recalled Wednesday, “who will be remembered for what he did for contemporary music.”

Although Dufallo never became music director of an orchestra, he was noted throughout his career for guest appearances and recordings that included many premieres by such notable European avant-gardists as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis and Peter Maxwell Davies. But Dufallo also had an interest in opera. He headed the Metropolitan Opera’s short-lived “Mini-Met” from 1972-74, and he was a regular at the Cincinnati Opera and the New York City Opera.

Much of Dufallo’s career involved teaching at the Juilliard School and at the Aspen Music Festival, where he was in charge of contemporary music during the 1970s and ‘80s. At Aspen, Dufallo was affectionately dubbed “Hard-to-Follow” because of his insistence that classically trained musicians master new techniques.

He furthered the cause of modern music by producing “Tracking,” a book of personal interviews with composers, in 1989. And he was a composer on the side. A short, charming string quartet encore was heard earlier this month at the Ojai Festival when the FLUX Quartet made its West Coast debut. The composer’s son, Cornelius, is a member of the young New York string quartet.

Dufallo is survived by his wife, the pianist Pamela Mia Paul; another son, Basil, of Seattle; a daughter, Rene Kirby, of Los Angeles; and a sister, Kathryn Traczyk, of East Chicago, Ind.