Morton Gould

During the Depression, Gould, while a teenager, worked in New York City playing piano in movie theaters, as well as with vaudeville acts.

[6]: 170  In the 1940s, Gould appeared on the Cresta Blanca Carnival[6] radio program, Keep 'Em Rolling,[6]: 189  and Major Bowes' Shower of Stars,[6]: 213  as well as The Chrysler Hour on CBS, where he reached an audience of millions.

[8] Gould composed Broadway scores such as Billion Dollar Baby and Arms and the Girl; film music such as Delightfully Dangerous, Cinerama Holiday, and Windjammer; music for television series such as World War One and the miniseries Holocaust; and ballet scores including Interplay, Fall River Legend, and I'm Old Fashioned.

His ability to seamlessly combine multiple musical genres into formal classical structure, while maintaining their distinctive elements, was unsurpassed, and Gould received three commissions for the United States Bicentennial.

[2] During his tenure, he lobbied for the intellectual rights of performing artists as the internet was becoming a force that would greatly affect ASCAP's members.

Incorporating new styles into his repertoire as they emerged, Gould incorporated wildly disparate elements, including a rapping narrator in a work titled "The Jogger and the Dinosaur," American tap dancing in his "Tap Dance Concerto" for dancer and orchestra, and a singing fire department titled "Hosedown"—commissioned works for the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony.

In 1995, Gould was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Stringmusic, a composition commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra in recognition of the final season of director Mstislav Rostropovich.

[12] Gould died on February 21, 1996, in Orlando, Florida,[1] where he was the first resident guest composer/conductor at the Disney Institute and was in the middle of a three-day tribute honoring his music.