(Theophilus), African-American pianist, teacher, and composer; b. Washington, D.C., June 27, 1922. Walker studied at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, earning his master's degree in 1941. He then entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied piano with Peter Serkin, composition with Rosario Scalero and GIAN CARLO MENOTTI, and chamber music with Gregor Piatigorsky and William Primrose. He was awarded an artist diploma there in 1945.

Walker also took piano lessons with Robert Casadesus in Fontainebleau in France, receiving a diploma in 1947. He obtained his D.M.A. from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., in 1957. That same year, he earned a Fulbright fellowship for travel to Paris, where he took courses in composition with NADIA BOULANGER.

In 1945 Walker made his debut as a pianist, and subsequently appeared throughout the U.S. and abroad. He was also active as a teacher, holding appointments at Dillard University in New Orleans in 1953, the New School for Social Research in N.Y., the Dalcroze School of Music in 1961, Smith College from 1961 to 1968, and the University of Colorado in 1968. In 1969 he was appointed a professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where he was chairman of the composition department there in 1974. In 1975 he was also named Distinguished Professor at the University of Delaware and adjunct professor at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore.

In 1969 he received a Guggenheim fellowship, and in 1971 and 1974 two Rockefeller fellowships for study in Italy. In 1982 he was made a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1988 he received a Koussevitzky Foundation grant. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996.

In his music Walker maintains a median modern line with an infusion of black folk idioms. Among his orchestral compositions are Trombone Concerto (1957), Antiphonys for chamber orchestra (1968), Variations (1971), Piano Concerto (1975), Dialogues for cello and orchestra (1975), In Praise of Folly, overture (1980), Cello Concerto (1981), An Eastman Overture (1983), two sinfonias (1984, 1990), and Orpheus for chamber orchestra (1994).

Walker's chamber pieces include two string quartets (1946, 1968), Cello Sonata (1957), two violin sonatas (1957, 1979), Music for Three for violin, cello, and piano (1970), Music for Brass, Sacred and Profane for brass quintet (1975), and Viola Sonata (1990). Among his piano compositions are four sonatas (1953, 1957, 1975, 1985). His vocal works include a MASS for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra (1977), a Cantata for soprano, tenor, boys' chorus, and orchestra (1982), and Poem for soprano and chamber ensemble, after T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men (1986).