Peggy Stuart redirects here. For those of a similar name, see Peggy Stewart (disambiguation) or Margaret Stuart (disambiguation) 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 influenced by American folk idiom; and also by composers such 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 with a grand-pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Her orchestral scores Night Froth, The Island (sinfonietta), Smoke Drift and Twilight City (piano and orchestra) were all premiered by the Boston Pops.In World War II, she was involved in a housing bureau for servicemen station 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, and started a research project in music psychotherapy at a mental institution.In 1952 she married Joseph R. Coolidge, a freelance writer from Boston. Together they wrote a number of children's stories with Peggy's background music, and other songs in traditional folk style. She wrote her only film score for The Silken Affair, starring David Niven, in 1956. She wrote incidental music for a New York production of Seán O'Casey's Red Roses for Me, and the music was later reworked as the orchestral suite Dublin Town. In 1963 and 1965, she was invited to Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw and Moscow for performances of her works, also sometimes appearing as piano soloist. She and Joseph met Aram Khachaturian and his wife Nina Makarova, becoming close friends. A ballet An Evening in New York was written on her return to the United States.Rhapsody for Harp and Orchestra was written in 1965. In 1967 her works were played in Tokyo in a concert of American music, and she was received by Emperor Hirohito's brother, Prince Mikasa. In 1969 Peggy St
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