Roger Huntington Sessions

Roger Huntington Sessions (1896-1985) is name-checked on the cover of "Freak Out!" (1966) under the heading "These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them". American (born in Brooklyn, N.Y.) composer and musical educator - said to have been revered by his fellow composers even as most of his music went unheard by the public. After studies at Harvard University, Yale University, and privately with Ernest Bloch, he taught for a while, then spent some years in Europe, meanwhile contributing to the historic Copland-Sessions new-music concerts of 1928 to 1931. Back in the U.S.A. from 1933, he taught at a series of schools including Princeton University and Juilliard University (from 1965). His early works were neoclassic and later ones 12-tone, all marked by high craft and seriousness; they include the opera "Montezuma" (1959-63) and the "Concerto for Orchestra", which won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.