Denes Agay (June 10, 1911 - January 24, 2007) was a Hungarian-born American composer, educator, arranger and author.
[1] Agay was born and raised in a small village near Budapest and began playing piano at the age of three.
He was simultaneously studying law at the University of Budapest, but dropped out a year before earning his degree to concentrate on music.
In 1942 he became an American citizen and joined the military, entertaining patients in the hospital wards in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
[3][4] Late in their lives he and his wife endowed a Piano and Composition Scholarship Fund for the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland.