Charles Hoag (1931–2018) was an American composer who was born in Chicago and raised in Iowa. He was Emeritus Music Professor of the University of Kansas.
Hoag attended the University of Iowa, where his double bass professor, the late Eldon Obrecht, became an important musical mentor and lifelong friend. After college, Charley had the opportunity to tour Europe as principal bassist of the Seventh Army Symphony. Post-army life included two years with the New Orleans Symphony before he returned to graduate school, receiving his master’s degree at the University of Redlands in California, and his PhD in Music Composition at the University of Iowa. After a stint teaching at Sam Houston University, Charley taught at the University of Oklahoma, and it was during his time playing bass with the Oklahoma City Symphony that he met and married his wife, Mary Tuven, a violist. In 1968, the couple settled in Lawrence, where Charley taught in the Kansas University School of Music for 38 years. In addition to years spent teaching double bass, he was a longtime professor of music theory and composition. In addition to his teaching career, he was also a bassist in several professional symphony orchestras. His music has been played by many vocal and instrumental ensembles including the Verdehr Trio, the Warsaw Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, and the Dale Warland Singers.
Over the course of his own long career, he had the distinction of earning an National Endowment for the Arts Composer Consortium Grant and numerous awards from American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). During the 1980s and 1990s, Charley traveled frequently to hear his music played around the world, and enjoyed a Carnegie Hall premiere of a composition commissioned by the Verdehr Trio, which they later recorded. Charley was granted residencies at both the Millay and MacDowell and served as conductor of the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra from 1978 to 1993.