Significant Performances
Important historic performances of McKay's music have been presented by Leopold Stokowski with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Howard Hanson with the Eastman/Rochester Symphony, Frederick Fennell at Eastman, Arthur Fiedler with the Boston Civic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, Karl Krueger, and Milton Katims with the Seattle Symphony, Richard Hickox at Seattle Symphony, Arthur Benjamin with the CBC Symphony in Vancouver, Carmen Dragon with Los Angeles and San Francisco Symphony players, and Fabien Sevitzky with the Indianapolis Symphony, and Boston Civic Symphony.
McKay's orchestral music was first broadcast in 1929 on NBC in a performance of his Caricature Dance Suite by Nat Shilkret's Orchestra. In following decades, live performances of his music were heard on virtually all the national radio networks, including his String Quartet No. 1, which was presented in the 1930s by the Kreiner Quartet on NBC. The players in this quartet were from Arturo Toscanini's radio symphony of the time. Also notable are several performances of McKay's folk music by the National Gallery of Art Symphony, under the direction of Richard Bales. Many of these concerts were broadcast and took place from the 1940s to the 1960s. McKay's symphonic music was also performed by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D. C. during the 1940s.
His Organ Sonata No. 1 was the National Prize Winner for 1939 and received a performance at the American Guild of Organists meeting the same year. McKay's symphonic work "From the Black Hills" was conducted by Howard Hanson at the First American Composers Festival in 1925 in Rochester, New York.
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