As a child his mother took him to the Soviet Union where he studied with the composer Dmitri Kabalevsky.
He later studied piano in New York with Isabella Vengerova and José Iturbi and composition with Nicolas Nabokov.
While working as George Balanchine's rehearsal pianist, he met Igor Stravinsky.
He often gave thematic recitals – sometimes illustrated with his own slides – and performed a great deal of new music, especially works by Aaron Copland.
[1] He wrote two operas: The Alchemy of Love (1969), in collaboration with the British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, with whom he also worked on an oratorio about Copernicus;[2] and Magic Water (1978).