Stephen J. Albert

At his death on December 27, 1992, on Cape Cod, MA, Stephen Albert was 51, in his leading as an artist. A three-car collision stated his life. He previously become recognized and adored like a seminal number in the postmodern (aka neo-Romantic) motion, which reaffirmed musical ideals still practical in the beginning of this hundred years. It required courage to reject the nouvelles vagues and vogues that twentieth-century academia embraced (until another cleaned over the moving sands of intellectual style). It required a thick pores and skin, too, to endure the derision his revisionism provoked in the first 1970s. But Albert experienced the courage of his convictions, as well as the wisdom to aid both his family members and his crusade by trading and working in uncommon stamps (an occupation that grew out of preteen philately). He analyzed in the Eastman College of Music with Bernard Rogers with the University or college of Pa, but withdrew from both. Eventually, he gained a B.A. level from your Philadelphia Academy of Music, after that still unaccredited. His 1st composition teacher have been Elie Siegmeister, similarly a maverick stylist; Siegmeister was been successful down the road by Joseph Castaldo and George Rochberg in Philadelphia. The amount helped Albert earn Fulbright, MacDowell, and Guggenheim Fellowships that culminated inside a Prix de Rome, where he resided for just two years, and where Carlo Maria Giulini became thinking about his music; Giulini launched the opulent Leaves from your Golden Laptop to happy Chicago Symphony viewers (and startled but approving reviewers, included in this this article writer) through the 1971 – 1972 period. The 1980s, though, had been Albert’s breakthrough 10 years. Gerard Schwarz became his champ with the brand new York Chamber Symphony on the 92nd Road Y, and in Seattle, where Albert was Composer-in-Residence from 1985 to 1988; Mstislav Rostropovich implemented fit in Washington, D.C. In 1985, he gained a Pulitzer Award for his symphony, RiverRun, and in 1987 he was honored an honorable talk about with the Pulitzer committee. For Seattle, he wrote In Concordiam, a violin concerto, and in June 1989 started the cello concerto commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma — his last main function. In 1991, Blowing wind Canticle, for clarinetist David Shifrin was presented with the Philadelphia Orchestra. And, after teaching on the Juilliard College, he became a member of the faculty of Harvard College or university.