Robert McBride

Robert McBride (1911–2007) was an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, and music educator, Professor Emeritus of Music at the 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 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation grant in 1937. The 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.