Joe Stuessy
Director, Division of Music

Joe Stuessy holds the Ph.D. and Master's degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Eugene List, Samuel Adler, and Bernard Rogers. His undergraduate degree is from Southern Methodist University. Dr. Stuessy is Professor and Director of the Division of Music at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Prior to joining UTSA in 1979, he was Associate Chairman of the Division of Music at SMU.

As a composer, Dr. Stuessy's Piano Concerto No. 1 was premiered by the Houston Symphony and has also been performed by the San Antonio Symphony and the Moscow State Orchestra. His Piano Concerto No. 2 was premiered in 1996. Both piano concertos have been recorded by the Moscow State Orchestra and are available on Aquarius compact discs. Other works by Dr. Stuessy have been performed by the Dallas Symphony, the Eastman-Rochester Symphony, Voices of Change, jazz trumpeter Clark Terry, and various other soloists and ensembles. A complete concert of his compositions was presented in 1993 at the Composer's Union in Moscow, Russia.

In 1990, Dr. Stuessy's book, Rock and Roll; Its History and Stylistic Development, was published by Prentice Hall. Now in its third edition, it has rapidly become a widely-adopted textbook across the nation. In 1985, Dr. Stuessy provided invited testimony to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on the topic of rock and roll lyrics. He has taught a course on the history of rock music to over 9,000 students at two major universities (SMU and UTSA).

phone: (210) 458-4355