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In this short letter, Howard Hanson, American composer, conductor, and teacher
who was influential in promoting contemporary American music, thanks Still for
the dedication of his ballet, Sahdji, which Hanson premiered. He was
the director the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, a post he held
from 1924 until his retirement in 1964. He established annual festivals of
American music and conducted more than 1,000 new works by young American
composers, many of them his own pupils. In 1958 Hanson organized the Eastman
Philharmonia, a student orchestra with which he toured Europe, the U.S.S.R.,
and the Middle East in 1961-1962. Between 1927-1935 he premiered eight works by William Grant Still.
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