Biography:

Westergaard was born in 1931 in Champaign, Illinois. He pursued undergraduate studies at Harvard University, graduating in 1953, and in 1956 obtained an M.F.A. degree from Princeton University. He studied with Roger Sessions, Walter Piston, Darius Milhaud, Edward Cone, Milton Babbitt and Wolfgang Fortner(Pratt 2001) in Freiburg/Germany.^{[citation needed]}

He taught at Columbia University, Amherst College, and Princeton Universit  before retiring in 2001. Westergaard continues to be active as a composer, mainly of opera and chamber music.