Born in Boston, Fine’s musical growth stemmed from not only his musical and creative intellect but also his personal and professional relationships with Aaron Copland and four other “Boston School” composers — Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, Harold Shapero and Arthur Berger. The uniqueness of these relationships, with their interpersonal and creative camaraderie, makes a moving and compelling story of the beginnings of truly American music.

A gifted pianist, Fine served as the pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and was admired for his superior sight-reading ability. He studied composition and theory with Walter Piston and Edward Burlingame Hill at Harvard University, and with Nadia Boulanger in France. Fine also studied orchestral conducting with Serge Koussevitzky at the Tanglewood Music Festival in the Berkshires. From 1939 to 1950, Fine taught theory and music history and conducted the Glee Club at Harvard, where he became a close associate of Copland, Stravinsky, Koussevitzky and Bernstein.

Fine left Harvard to found the music department and ultimately the Creative Arts Department at Brandeis University, where he taught from 1950 to 1962. Among Fine’s many honors were two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Research Fellowship, a National Institute of Arts and Letters award, and a New York Music Critics' Circle award. At age 47, he died suddenly days after conducting his Symphony 1962 at Tanglewood, having filled in for Charles Munch who, ironically, had become ill.