Dates

• Existence: October 20, 1944 - September 9, 1998

Biography

The brilliant talents of William Albright enabled him to do more in his only 53 years than many performers, composers, and educators are able to do in a full career. Born in Gary, IN, in 1944, Albright received early musical training between 1959 and 1962 at the Juilliard Preparatory Department, where he studied piano with Rosetta Goodkind and began theory and composition study with Hugh Aitken. In 1963, he began his college career at the University of Michigan, beginning an association that would last the remaining 35 years of his life, years that, not coincidentally, saw the composition department in Ann Arbor ascend to world-class status. His primary composition teachers included Ross Lee Finney and Leslie Bassett; he also excelled at the organ, studying with Marilyn Mason. By 1970, he would receive a doctor of musical arts in composition, with the Alliance for Orchestra, an expansion of his earlier master's composition Masculine-Feminine Part I (1967). As recipient of a Fulbright fellowship (the first of two) in 1968 - 1969, he spent time at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with one of the century's foremost composers and teachers, Olivier Messiaen. Other major teachers with whom he studied were George Rochberg and Max Deutsch.

Source: /www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Name/William-Albright/Composer/160-1#drilldown_overview>.