sentences:  His organ sonata No.1 was the National Prize Winner for 1939 and received a performance at the American Guild of Organists meeting the same year.McKay's symphonic work "From the Black Hills" was conducted by Howard Hanson at the First American Composers Festival in 1925 in Rochester, N.Y.
  
  McKay held the Alchin Chair of Music at the University of Southern California in the summer of 1939, succeeding Arnold Schoenberg and Howard Hanson in that capacity, and returned to teach at USC for two more visiting sessions in later years.