Robert Helps, Randall Hodgkinson

Robert Helps was the cinematic equivalent of a distinguished featured player rather than a star in America's post-WWII avant-garde, both as a composer and as a pianist. He matriculated at Columbia University in 1947, then transferred to U.C. Berkeley in 1949 where he completed his degree in 1951. He was also a piano student at the Juilliard School, but more importantly with Abby Whiteside as a private student. During his two years at Berkeley he studied composition and theory with Roger Sessions, and again privately thereafter, the most powerful influence on his music. Helps' ...