Robert McBride

Robert McBride (1911–2007) was an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, and music educator, Professor Emeritus of Music at the [l=University of Arizona]. He started playing clarinet, oboe, saxophone and piano at an early age. McBride studied composition with Otto Luening at the University of Arizona, receiving a BMus degree in 1933 and MMus in 1935. He started teaching at the Bennington College in 1935 and received a [l=Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation] grant in 1937. The [l=American Academy Of Arts And Letters] awarded McBride a prize for "writing a new idiom and expression" in modern American music in 1942. After he moved to New York City in 1946, Robert McBride worked for a few years as a commercial composer and arranger for Triumph Films company, writing scores for various short films. As a growing TV industry led to a decline for shorts at the movie theaters, McBride returned to the academic career and joined the faculty at the University of Arizona, where he taught until 1976.