SANDPOINT - Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, musician, conductor, writer and former Festival at Sandpoint artistic director Gunther Schuller died in Boston Sunday from undisclosed medical issues. He was 89.

Schuller directed the Festival at Sandpoint between 1985 and 1998, and launched the festival's Schweitzer Institute of Learning.

Schuller arrived at the festival as artistic director during its third year, when it was mainly a fledgling classical music event. At his hands, the festival took off and morphed into a multi-genre event.

"He really took it to the next step," according to Dyno Wahl, executive director of the Festival at Sandpoint.

Schuller expanded the annual festival from mainly symphonic to a variety of musical genres. He also launched the Schweitzer Institute of Learning, which focused on gifted students of jazz, composition, conducting and chamber music.

The institute drew a world renowned faculty, according to former festival president and board member Bobbie Huguenin.

"People came from all over the world to teach there," Huguenin said, calling the festival's Schuller period a "golden era."

According to Wahl, both the festival and the institute, "really put Sandpoint on the map."

Schuller's presence attracted other artists and legitimized the nascent festival for other high-end musicians, she said. He used his connections in the music world to bring such heavyweights at Wynton Marsalis to help him teach at the institute and play at the festival.

Part of the attraction was the Spokane Symphony. According to Huguenin, who was quick to point out she was a music appreciator and not a musician, at most festivals they have "pick-up" symphonies - musicians who come together from all over to play. The Festival at Sandpoint had the attraction of being proximate to the tightly-knit Spokane Symphony, who all worked and played together regularly.

"It was an altogether wonderful time," Huguenin said. "He loved Sandpoint and he loved the Spokane Symphony orchestra."

Schuller also found kindred spirits here.

"He loved good food. He loved a great martini," Wahl said. "He loved the lake."

He enjoyed an ice-cold Coca-Cola before a performance, according to Festival at Sandpoint office manager Carol Winget, who started during Schuller's final year at the festival.

Huguenin recalled frequently having Schuller and his fellow artists over to her house.

"He liked to come after the performances and have a martini and a nice dinner, and talk to all the hangers-on until 1 or 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning," she said.

The Huguenins would put up Schuller and his wife, Marjorie Black, at Schweitzer during their visits to Sandpoint, and entertain the Boston couple on the lake or on nature outings, once to the Clark Fork delta with several other institute faculty.

"They loved it," Huguenin recalled. "They felt like they were on a National Geographic tour."

Schuller was magnetic, and attracted people to him from all over the world, Huguenin said, who expressed wonder at why he liked to hang out with her and her family.

"I felt it was kind of a waste of time for him to hang with us," she said, adding, "but I think he liked the family atmosphere."

Unfortunately, Schuller's vision for the Schweitzer Institute was much larger than the available funding to keep it open. It eventually folded. But the maestro left his mark on many of his students, who went on to excel as professional musicians. He was a born teacher, according to Wahl.

"He was a total visionary," Winget said. "He wasn't necessarily the businessman."

Born in New York into a family of classical musicians, Schuller wrote more than 200 solo, orchestral, operatic and jazz compositions. His awards are legion and include the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his orchestral composition "Of Reminiscences and Reflections," which he dedicated to Marjorie.

During his career, Schuller played with such musical icons as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra and even Johnny Mathis. He also played with the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. In addition to the Festival at Sandpoint, Schuller also served as artistic director for the Northwest Bach Festival in Spokane and as the music director for the Spokane Symphony for one year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.