Depression-era conditions compelled him to turn down graduate fellowship offers, and he accepted a position at Paine College in Georgia,[2] where he founded and chaired the music department.
[2] Feeling that he was stagnating artistically, he returned to Central New York in 1942 to study advanced composition at the Eastman School of Music.
[2] Fax composed works for chorus, symphony, chamber ensemble, voice, piano and organ, in addition to two full-length operas, A Christmas Miracle (1958) and 'Til Victory Is Won (1967).
Washington Post critic Paul Hume praised Fax's Sonata for Clarinet and Piano as "striking…difficult…a work of surprising contrapuntal texture" and declared the composer's oeuvre "music of rare power."
'Til Victory is Won (1967), Fax's epic operatic history of the African American experience, was mounted at the Kennedy Center.