George Frederick McKay

George Frederick McKay (1899 – 1970) was a prolific modern American composer. He was born in the Far West of America in the small frontier wheat-farming town of Harrington, Washington. His family later moved to the much larger town of Spokane, where he attended school up to his college years. McKay began composing orchestral music as early as his high school years. In 1919, he began seriously studying music and composition at the University of Washington, Seattle, and later at the Eastman School of Music at Rochester, New York. After McKay’s graduation from Eastman in 1923, he embarked on a teaching career that included posts in North Carolina, South Dakota, and Missouri and finally at what became his permanent professorship at the University of Washington, Seattle. There, he became recognized over the span of four decades as an outstanding educator, composer and leader in the propagation of American music. Among his students are composers William Bolcom, Earl Robinson, John Cage and the legendary producer Goddard Lieberson. McKay died in 1970 in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. McKay 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, along with a recognition of the great natural beauty of this region and the vitality of its people. He admired composers who involved national folk-culture in their music, such as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Carlos Chávez, 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. McKay composed nearly 1000 musical titles, including songs, chamber works, violin and cello sonatas, dance music, jazzy piano pieces, rhapsodies, string quartets, folk music suites for string orchestra, large choral works, organ pieces and symphonies. His works were widely performed and attracted conductors such as Leopold Stokowski, Sir Thomas Beecham, Arthur Benjamin, Fabien Sevitsky, Milton Katims and Howard Hanson.