Peggy Stuart Coolidge

Peggy Stuart Coolidge (19 July 1913 – 7 May 1981) was an American composer and conductor. She was one of the first female American composers to have a recording devoted to her symphonic works, and the first American composer (male or female) to have a concert devoted entirely to her works presented in the Soviet Union. Although she does not quote particular melodies, her compositional style is accessible and influenced by American folk and popular idioms; her success at creating a distinctly American musical voice places her among such figures as Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. Peggy Stuart was born in Swampscott, Massachusetts. She started piano lessons at age five, wrote her first song at age nine, and later studied with Heinrich Gebhard (a pupil of Teodor Leszetycki and teacher of Leonard Bernstein), privately with Raymond Robinson, and at the New England Conservatory with Quincy Porter. She originally planned to be a concert pianist, and her early mature works are all for piano. In 1937, she wrote a ballet Cracked Ice, for the Boston Skating Club. This was the first ballet ever composed specifically for ice skating. The work was scored, at her request, by Ferde Grofé, who conducted it at Madison Square Garden; it was also played by the Boston Pops Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler. Stuart then studied orchestration. Her orchestral scores Night Froth, The Island (sinfonietta), Smoke Drift and Twilight City (piano and orchestra) were all premiered by the Boston Pops. During World War II, she was involved in a housing bureau for servicemen stationed in Boston, and often played for hospitalised soldiers. She conducted an all-woman ensemble, and was pianist and assistant conductor of the Women's Symphony of Boston. She founded the Junior League Orchestra in Boston and conducted it for seven years. After the war she moved to New York City, and started a research project in music psychotherapy at a mental institution.