George Frederick McKay
Encyclopedia
George Frederick McKay was a prolific modern American composer
.
. His family later moved to the much larger town of Spokane, where he attended school up to his college years. He was attracted to American folk-song, including jazz and blues and Native American themes, and to a great degree, his music contains a poignant evocation of the West Coast American spirit, including glimpses of a populist era of street marches, honky-tonk dance halls and social chaos along with a recognition of the great natural beauty of his home region and the vitality of its people (i.e. Harbor Narrative-1934). He admired composers who involved national folk-culture in their music, e.g. Heitor Villa-Lobos
, Carlos Chávez
, William Grant Still
, Antonín Dvořák
and Béla Bartók
. Many of George Frederick McKay's symphonic works center on folk themes and include pieces dedicated to Native American music.
He was famous for his intellectual and moral support of young composers who studied with him in Seattle, viz. William Bolcom
, John Cage
, Goddard Lieberson
, and Earl Robinson
.
He also founded the Composition Department at the University of Washington
, where he was a Professor of Music for over 40 years.
He composed works in various styles, including 70 orchestral works, and a total of nearly 1000 musical titles including songs, chamber works, romantic violin and cello sonatas, "ultramodern" dance music, jazzy piano pieces, band rhapsodies, serious string quartets, light opera tunes, folk music suites for string orchestra, large choral works, organ pieces and modern American symphonies. He composed several volumes of music for children and was a serious advocate for music education in the United States. He continued active composing during his retirement years at Lake Tahoe, Nevada and also wrote some pieces influenced by travel to Japan in the 1960s. Some of his early orchestral works attracted conductors such as Leopold Stokowski
, Sir Thomas Beecham
and Howard Hanson
for live performances in the 1930s and 1940s. His music has recently been recorded by performers such as William Bolcom and John McLaughlin Williams
, and now is being heard worldwide via radio broadcasts and international performances. McKay also conducted the Seattle Symphony
on several occasions.
McKay was also the literary author of a number of papers and books on musical technique, including "Creative Orchestration," "The Technique of Modern Harmony," and "Creative Harmony."
and Selim Palmgren
. McKay attributed his appreciation of pure melody and the importance of folk culture to his association with Sinding, with whom he corresponded over several decades until Sinding's death. McKay later authored a poignant article concerning Sinding's time in America for Etude Magazine (November 1944 issue). Palmgren nominated McKay's Violin Sonata composed at Eastman for the Pulitzer Prize
. Howard Hanson
was just beginning his long tenure as director at Eastman while McKay was studying there, and he invited McKay back many times between 1925 to 1960 for performances of the young Westerner's music. McKay's "From the Black Hills" was performed by the Eastman Symphony conducted by Hanson in the first American Composers Festival at Eastman in 1925, along with an early work by Aaron Copland
and music of other contemporary composers. McKay's initial college studies began in accounting at Washington State University
, and then in music at the University of Washington under Carl Paige Wood. In his early student days in Seattle, the young composer experimented with jazz, ragtime and romantic art songs.
premiered several of his works 1930-1970, with the composer conducting in some performances. In 1952, McKay was commissioned by the Seattle Symphony to compose the city's Centennial Symphony, now known as "Evocation Symphony" or "Symphony for Seattle". This work has been professionally recorded by the National Symphony of Ukraine with John McLaughlin Williams
. Williams has been a strong advocate for McKay's orchestral music and has recorded seven McKay symphonies, including the lively Native-American-influenced piece "From A Moonlit Ceremony" (premiered by Leopold Stokowski
in 1946) and "Harbor Narrative", a portrayal of the Northwest Maritime scene from the early 20th century.
, Academy Award, Guggenheim Grant and Grammy Award
. These students included William Bolcom
, Goddard Lieberson
, John Cage
, Earl Robinson
, Ken Benshoof, and Gerald Kechley. McKay himself was awarded a Guggenheim Grant to study in Europe in the 1920s, but turned it down to stay in touch with his American musical roots and care for his growing young family. His early teaching assignments took him to North Carolina, South Dakota, and Missouri before he finally settled in Seattle; and he composed music celebrating all these atmospheric locations. Music related to the Dakotas by McKay is still in publication.
. More symphonic works are now out in 2008, including his hour-length American Dance Symphony, "Epoch", which celebrates four American Poets (Poe
, Lanier
, Whitman
, and Sandburg
) and their place in history. "Epoch" was recently recorded by the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Nardolillo. William Bolcom
, McKay's former student at the University of Washington, has recorded several early McKay jazz-influenced works and art songs on the piano. Brian Reagin has recorded McKay's Violin Concerto for an album that also includes "Suite on 16th Century Hymn Tunes," which demonstrates McKay's mastery of string music and love of melodic themes. The McKay prize-winning "Suite for Harp and Flute" was released on "Medieval Dances for Flute and Harp", on Cantilena Records, performed by Laurel Zucker, flute, and Susan Jolles, harp. This work has been performed widely in concert, including at the World Harp Conference venue. Leonard Slatkin
has performed live and recorded McKay's "To A Liberator" with the Nashville Symphony for the Lincoln Bi-centennial on NAXOS Records (February 2009).
with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra
, Howard Hanson
with the Eastman/Rochester Symphony, Frederick Fennell
at Eastman, Arthur Fiedler
with the Boston Civic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham
, Karl Krueger, and Milton Katims
with the Seattle Symphony
, Richard Hickox
at Seattle Symphony, Arthur Benjamin
with the CBC Symphony in Vancouver
, Carmen Dragon
with Los Angeles and San Francisco Symphony players, and Fabien Sevitzky
with the Indianapolis Symphony, and Boston Civic Symphony.
McKay's orchestral music was first broadcast in 1929 on NBC in a performance of his Caricature Dance Suite by Nat Shilkret
's Orchestra. In following decades, live performances of his music were heard on virtually all the national radio networks, including his String Quartet No. 1, which was presented in the 1930s by the Kreiner Quartet on NBC. The players in this quartet were from Arturo Toscanini
's radio symphony of the time. Also notable are several performances of McKay's folk music by the National Gallery of Art Symphony, under the direction of Richard Bales. Many of these concerts were broadcast and took place from the 1940s to the 1960s. McKay's symphonic music was also performed by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D. C. during the 1940s.
His Organ Sonata No. 1 was the National Prize Winner for 1939 and received a performance at the American Guild of Organists meeting the same year. McKay's symphonic work "From the Black Hills" was conducted by Howard Hanson
at the First American Composers Festival in 1925 in Rochester, New York.
in the summer of 1939, following Arnold Schoenberg
and Howard Hanson in that capacity, and returned to teach at USC for two more visiting sessions in later years. He also had visiting professorships at Oregon, Michigan and Drake. He was concerned with environmental and humanitarian issues throughout his life, especially the cause of world peace; and his music evidences a sensitivity to the beauty of nature and the spiritual side of mankind.
and was a guest conductor with the CBC Orchestra in Vancouver. He led a community chamber orchestra in Seattle in the 1930s and occasionally conducted the University of Washington Symphony during his tenure at the School of Music (1927–1968). He reportedly was the most published American composer during the mid-twentieth century.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
.
Biography
McKay was born in the Far West of America in the small frontier wheat farming town of Harrington, WashingtonHarrington, Washington
Harrington is a city in Lincoln County, Washington, United States. The population was 424 at the 2010 census. It was named after W.P. Harrington, a banker from Colusa, California who had heavily invested in local land.-History:...
. His family later moved to the much larger town of Spokane, where he attended school up to his college years. He was attracted to American folk-song, including jazz and blues and Native American themes, and to a great degree, his music contains a poignant evocation of the West Coast American spirit, including glimpses of a populist era of street marches, honky-tonk dance halls and social chaos along with a recognition of the great natural beauty of his home region and the vitality of its people (i.e. Harbor Narrative-1934). He admired composers who involved national folk-culture in their music, e.g. Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...
, Carlos Chávez
Carlos Chávez
Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez was a Mexican composer, conductor, music theorist, educator, journalist, and founder and director of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. He was influenced by native Mexican cultures. Of his six Symphonies, his Symphony No...
, William Grant Still
William Grant Still
William Grant Still was an African-American classical composer who wrote more than 150 compositions. He was the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major...
, Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
and Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
. Many of George Frederick McKay's symphonic works center on folk themes and include pieces dedicated to Native American music.
He was famous for his intellectual and moral support of young composers who studied with him in Seattle, viz. William Bolcom
William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, two Grammy Awards, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. Bolcom taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973–2008...
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Goddard Lieberson
Goddard Lieberson
Goddard Lieberson was the president of Columbia Records from 1956 to 1971, and from 1973 to 1975. He was also a composer, and studied with George Frederick McKay, at the University of Washington, Seattle....
, and Earl Robinson
Earl Robinson
Earl Hawley Robinson was a singer-songwriter and composer from Seattle, Washington. Robinson is probably as well remembered for his left-leaning political views as he is for his music, including the songs "Joe Hill", "Black and White", and the cantata "Ballad for Americans"...
.
He also founded the Composition Department at the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
, where he was a Professor of Music for over 40 years.
He composed works in various styles, including 70 orchestral works, and a total of nearly 1000 musical titles including songs, chamber works, romantic violin and cello sonatas, "ultramodern" dance music, jazzy piano pieces, band rhapsodies, serious string quartets, light opera tunes, folk music suites for string orchestra, large choral works, organ pieces and modern American symphonies. He composed several volumes of music for children and was a serious advocate for music education in the United States. He continued active composing during his retirement years at Lake Tahoe, Nevada and also wrote some pieces influenced by travel to Japan in the 1960s. Some of his early orchestral works attracted conductors such as Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
, Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
and Howard Hanson
Howard Hanson
Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music...
for live performances in the 1930s and 1940s. His music has recently been recorded by performers such as William Bolcom and John McLaughlin Williams
John McLaughlin Williams
John McLaughlin Williams is a Grammy award-winning American orchestral conductor and violinist.He attended the Boston University School of Music, the New England Conservatory and is a graduate of The Cleveland Institute of Music. His violin studies were with Dorothy Delay, conducting with Carl...
, and now is being heard worldwide via radio broadcasts and international performances. McKay also conducted the Seattle Symphony
Seattle Symphony
The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra's season runs from September through July, and serves as the pit orchestra for most productions of the Seattle Opera in addition to its own concerts...
on several occasions.
McKay was also the literary author of a number of papers and books on musical technique, including "Creative Orchestration," "The Technique of Modern Harmony," and "Creative Harmony."
Education
George Frederick McKay was the first graduate in composition studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, in 1923, where he studied under Christian SindingChristian Sinding
Christian August Sinding was a Norwegian composer.-Personal life:He was born in Kongsberg as a son of mine superindendent Matthias Wilhelm Sinding and Cecilie Marie Mejdell . He was a brother of the painter Otto Sinding and the sculptor Stephan Sinding...
and Selim Palmgren
Selim Palmgren
Selim Gustaf Adolf Palmgren , dubbed "The Finnish Chopin", was a Finnish composer, pianist, and conductor. Palmgren was born in Pori, Finland, February 16, 1878. He studied at the Conservatory in Helsinki from 1895 to 1899, then continued his piano studies in Berlin with Ansorge, Berger and Busoni...
. McKay attributed his appreciation of pure melody and the importance of folk culture to his association with Sinding, with whom he corresponded over several decades until Sinding's death. McKay later authored a poignant article concerning Sinding's time in America for Etude Magazine (November 1944 issue). Palmgren nominated McKay's Violin Sonata composed at Eastman for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
. Howard Hanson
Howard Hanson
Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music...
was just beginning his long tenure as director at Eastman while McKay was studying there, and he invited McKay back many times between 1925 to 1960 for performances of the young Westerner's music. McKay's "From the Black Hills" was performed by the Eastman Symphony conducted by Hanson in the first American Composers Festival at Eastman in 1925, along with an early work by Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
and music of other contemporary composers. McKay's initial college studies began in accounting at Washington State University
Washington State University
Washington State University is a public research university based in Pullman, Washington, in the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. Founded in 1890, WSU is the state's original and largest land-grant university...
, and then in music at the University of Washington under Carl Paige Wood. In his early student days in Seattle, the young composer experimented with jazz, ragtime and romantic art songs.
Work at the University of Washington
In 1927, Carl Paige Wood brought McKay back to the University of Washington as a promising new faculty member. McKay began a four-decade tenure of composing, teaching and leading performing groups in concerts of contemporary and American works in the Seattle metropolitan area. His compositions were performed by orchestras in Philadelphia, Boston, Indianapolis and Los Angeles over the years, and the Seattle SymphonySeattle Symphony
The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra's season runs from September through July, and serves as the pit orchestra for most productions of the Seattle Opera in addition to its own concerts...
premiered several of his works 1930-1970, with the composer conducting in some performances. In 1952, McKay was commissioned by the Seattle Symphony to compose the city's Centennial Symphony, now known as "Evocation Symphony" or "Symphony for Seattle". This work has been professionally recorded by the National Symphony of Ukraine with John McLaughlin Williams
John McLaughlin Williams
John McLaughlin Williams is a Grammy award-winning American orchestral conductor and violinist.He attended the Boston University School of Music, the New England Conservatory and is a graduate of The Cleveland Institute of Music. His violin studies were with Dorothy Delay, conducting with Carl...
. Williams has been a strong advocate for McKay's orchestral music and has recorded seven McKay symphonies, including the lively Native-American-influenced piece "From A Moonlit Ceremony" (premiered by Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
in 1946) and "Harbor Narrative", a portrayal of the Northwest Maritime scene from the early 20th century.
Significant students
McKay's students at the University of Washington included future winners of the Pulitzer PrizePulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
, Academy Award, Guggenheim Grant and Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
. These students included William Bolcom
William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, two Grammy Awards, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. Bolcom taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973–2008...
, Goddard Lieberson
Goddard Lieberson
Goddard Lieberson was the president of Columbia Records from 1956 to 1971, and from 1973 to 1975. He was also a composer, and studied with George Frederick McKay, at the University of Washington, Seattle....
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Earl Robinson
Earl Robinson
Earl Hawley Robinson was a singer-songwriter and composer from Seattle, Washington. Robinson is probably as well remembered for his left-leaning political views as he is for his music, including the songs "Joe Hill", "Black and White", and the cantata "Ballad for Americans"...
, Ken Benshoof, and Gerald Kechley. McKay himself was awarded a Guggenheim Grant to study in Europe in the 1920s, but turned it down to stay in touch with his American musical roots and care for his growing young family. His early teaching assignments took him to North Carolina, South Dakota, and Missouri before he finally settled in Seattle; and he composed music celebrating all these atmospheric locations. Music related to the Dakotas by McKay is still in publication.
Professional recordings
McKay's music is currently recorded professionally by NAXOS on four albums, including two symphonic CDs conducted by John McLaughlin WilliamsJohn McLaughlin Williams
John McLaughlin Williams is a Grammy award-winning American orchestral conductor and violinist.He attended the Boston University School of Music, the New England Conservatory and is a graduate of The Cleveland Institute of Music. His violin studies were with Dorothy Delay, conducting with Carl...
. More symphonic works are now out in 2008, including his hour-length American Dance Symphony, "Epoch", which celebrates four American Poets (Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, Lanier
Sidney Lanier
Sidney Lanier was an American musician and poet.-Biography:Sidney Lanier was born February 3, 1842, in Macon, Georgia, to parents Robert Sampson Lanier and Mary Jane Anderson; he was mostly of English ancestry. His distant French Huguenot ancestors immigrated to England in the 16th century...
, Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, and Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
) and their place in history. "Epoch" was recently recorded by the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Nardolillo. William Bolcom
William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, two Grammy Awards, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. Bolcom taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973–2008...
, McKay's former student at the University of Washington, has recorded several early McKay jazz-influenced works and art songs on the piano. Brian Reagin has recorded McKay's Violin Concerto for an album that also includes "Suite on 16th Century Hymn Tunes," which demonstrates McKay's mastery of string music and love of melodic themes. The McKay prize-winning "Suite for Harp and Flute" was released on "Medieval Dances for Flute and Harp", on Cantilena Records, performed by Laurel Zucker, flute, and Susan Jolles, harp. This work has been performed widely in concert, including at the World Harp Conference venue. Leonard Slatkin
Leonard Slatkin
Leonard Edward Slatkin is an American conductor and composer.-Early life and education:Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father Felix Slatkin was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet,...
has performed live and recorded McKay's "To A Liberator" with the Nashville Symphony for the Lincoln Bi-centennial on NAXOS Records (February 2009).
Significant performances
Important historic performances of McKay's music have been presented by Leopold StokowskiLeopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra
Hollywood Bowl Orchestra
The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra is a symphony orchestra which is managed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and plays the vast majority of its performances at the Hollywood Bowl....
, Howard Hanson
Howard Hanson
Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music...
with the Eastman/Rochester Symphony, Frederick Fennell
Frederick Fennell
Frederick Fennell was an internationally recognized conductor, and one of the primary figures in promoting the wind ensemble as a performing group. He was also influential as a band pedagogue, and greatly affected the field of music education in the USA and abroad...
at Eastman, Arthur Fiedler
Arthur Fiedler
Arthur Fiedler was a long-time conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a symphony orchestra that specializes in popular and light classical music. With a combination of musicianship and showmanship, he made the Boston Pops one of the best-known orchestras in the country...
with the Boston Civic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
, Karl Krueger, and Milton Katims
Milton Katims
Milton Katims was an American violist and conductor. He was music director of the Seattle Symphony for 22 years . In that time he added more than 75 works, made recordings, premiered new pieces and led the orchestra on several tours. He expanded the orchestra's series of family and suburban...
with the Seattle Symphony
Seattle Symphony
The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra's season runs from September through July, and serves as the pit orchestra for most productions of the Seattle Opera in addition to its own concerts...
, Richard Hickox
Richard Hickox
Richard Sidney Hickox CBE was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music.-Early life:Hickox was born in Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire into a musical family...
at Seattle Symphony, Arthur Benjamin
Arthur Benjamin
Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rhumba, composed in 1938.-Biography:...
with the CBC Symphony in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, Carmen Dragon
Carmen Dragon
Carmen Dragon was an American conductor, composer, and arranger who in addition to live performances and recording, worked in radio, film, and television.Dragon was born in Antioch, California...
with Los Angeles and San Francisco Symphony players, and Fabien Sevitzky
Fabien Sevitzky
Fabien Sevitzky was a Russian-born American conductor. He was the nephew of Serge Koussevitsky....
with the Indianapolis Symphony, and Boston Civic Symphony.
McKay's orchestral music was first broadcast in 1929 on NBC in a performance of his Caricature Dance Suite by Nat Shilkret
Nathaniel Shilkret
Nathaniel Shilkret was an American composer, conductor, clarinetist, pianist, business executive, and music director born in New York City, New York to an Austrian immigrant family.-Early career:...
's Orchestra. In following decades, live performances of his music were heard on virtually all the national radio networks, including his String Quartet No. 1, which was presented in the 1930s by the Kreiner Quartet on NBC. The players in this quartet were from Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
's radio symphony of the time. Also notable are several performances of McKay's folk music by the National Gallery of Art Symphony, under the direction of Richard Bales. Many of these concerts were broadcast and took place from the 1940s to the 1960s. McKay's symphonic music was also performed by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D. C. during the 1940s.
His Organ Sonata No. 1 was the National Prize Winner for 1939 and received a performance at the American Guild of Organists meeting the same year. McKay's symphonic work "From the Black Hills" was conducted by Howard Hanson
Howard Hanson
Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music...
at the First American Composers Festival in 1925 in Rochester, New York.
Work elsewhere
McKay held the Alchin Chair of Music at the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
in the summer of 1939, following Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
and Howard Hanson in that capacity, and returned to teach at USC for two more visiting sessions in later years. He also had visiting professorships at Oregon, Michigan and Drake. He was concerned with environmental and humanitarian issues throughout his life, especially the cause of world peace; and his music evidences a sensitivity to the beauty of nature and the spiritual side of mankind.
Work with the Seattle Symphony
The composer also conducted several premieres of his works with the Seattle SymphonySeattle Symphony
The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra's season runs from September through July, and serves as the pit orchestra for most productions of the Seattle Opera in addition to its own concerts...
and was a guest conductor with the CBC Orchestra in Vancouver. He led a community chamber orchestra in Seattle in the 1930s and occasionally conducted the University of Washington Symphony during his tenure at the School of Music (1927–1968). He reportedly was the most published American composer during the mid-twentieth century.
External links
- http://www.georgefrederickmckaymusic.net/ George Frederick McKay Music
- George Frederick McKay - UW Alumnus