ACME Spotlight: Meet Adrienne Albert

By ACME Co-Chair Mary Au (Mu Nu, Los Angeles Alumni)

MEET ACME HONOREE ADRIENNE ALBERT

Award-winning composer Adrienne Albert’s chamber, choral, vocal, orchestral and wind band works have been performed throughout the United States and across the globe. Before she began composing her own music in the 1990s, Albert enjoyed a long career as a singer working with legendary composers including Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, Philip Glass and Gunther Schuller among others. Albert’s own music has been supported by noteworthy arts organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer/ Rockefeller Foundation, Subito Awards, Mu Phi Epsilon Fraternity, MPE Foundation, ACME and ASCAP. Recent commissions include works for The Cornell University Chorus, Harvard-Westlake School, Holyoke Civic Symphony, Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation, Palisades Virtuosi, Zinkali Trio, Pennsylvania Academy of Music, Chamber Music Palisades and Pacific Serenades as well as private individuals. A graduate of UCLA, Albert studied composition privately with Stephen Mosko and orchestration with Albert Harris. She is a member of ASCAP, the LA Composers Forum, SAG, AFTRA, The American Music Center, American Composers Forum, International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) and the Dominant Club. She is vice president in charge of programming for NACUSA/LA and past president of Mu Phi Epsilon’s Los Angeles Alumni chapter.

To Adrienne Albert (Phi Nu, Los Angeles Alumni), “music is the universal language that knows no boundaries or barriers.” It transports this contemporary American composer to distant lands as well as to places within the vast American landscape. Her music has become widely known for its melodic and lyrical beauty as well as its whimsy and playfulness.

Who inspired you to become a musician?

My parents were both European trained violinists and working musicians. I remember them playing quartets in the living room when I was very young. You can say that I was breastfed on music. They wanted me to become a pianist and play with them so they started me on the piano when I was 4. However, I did not want to become their accompanist. My love was in singing even though I am not a trained singer.

How did you get the opportunity to sing for Igor Stravinsky?

I toured with the Gregg Smith Singers in Europe in 1958. It was Smith who introduced me to Stravinsky in 1960. When Stravinsky heard me sing, he told me he loved my “perfect boy alto” voice and hired me to be the soloist on the recording of his “Mass.” I collaborated with the maestro on numerous occasions and recorded three more solos with him, “Four Russian Songs,” “Cantata” and “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat.”

While working on “Four Russian Songs,” I was given transliteration so I could learn to sing the songs in Russian and Stravinsky coached me on the Russian pronunciation. In 1966, Stravinsky wrote “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” for his wife, setting her favorite poem to music. In this atonal piece, the piano and the voice parts never meet until the final note of the piece. I went into a studio and recorded it with pianist Robert Craft, Stravinsky’s associate and the maestro in the studio, without any prior rehearsals. The representative recording for this piece is my voice. Through Stravinsky, I met my husband, John McClure, who was the producer of Stravinsky’s “Mass” and the head of Columbia Masterworks Records. He was also Leonard Bernstein’s producer.

How did you get the chance to sing for Leonard Bernstein?

Two weeks after John and I were married, we flew to London while Bernstein was recording a Mahler Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. As was his custom, Lenny grabbed me, gave me a big kiss, and called me “HADRIAN.” At home in New York City, John and I would go to Avery Fisher Hall for the Thursday evening concerts, to spend time with Bernstein and watch him conduct.

I was a contractor for singers and sang on a number of Bernstein’s recordings, including Responsory: Alleluia of his “Mass.” In 1985, Bernstein wanted to record his “West Side Story.” This is the first time that he would conduct the piece by himself. I contracted the Sharks and Jets, the singers for the recording and was also a singer on this recording.

What was the turning point and inspiration to start your composing career?

In the 1970s, I was a jingle singer in New York City. My best friend, Jean Fox, and I formed Kids & Company to manage our children and help negotiate their contracts in their work as jingle singers.

In 1990, I brought the children to Los Angeles for a TV show screen test. Since I was born and grew up in LA, I was the obvious choice to manage the LA office of Fox-Albert Management. While living there I met Monte Stettin, who became my partner — John and I divorced in 1966 although we remained friends throughout his lifetime. On our first date, Monte told me I was an artist and encouraged me to pursue a career in the arts, not business. I decided to sell my share of Fox-Albert Management to Jean and enrolled in a film scoring class at UCLA to begin composing at age 50.

How would you describe your style as a composer?

Music is in my bones. I compose from the heart and the gut, not the brain. My music is created to make people feel emotionally vulnerable. To me, music is a universal language that creates ambience to transport the world to a different place, like food, a delicious dish with herbs and spices that makes it intense and different than most art.

Why did you decide to self-publish your music?

I didn’t want to give 90% of my labor to a publishing company. Keep all your publishing rights! Most of my music is published by my own publishing company, Kenter Canyon Music, although I do have several works that are published by Theodore Presser.

What is it like to be a woman composer today vs. when you were starting out?

I choose not to think of or label myself as a woman composer. Music does not have a gender; therefore, women should have an equal place on the concert stage or other medium for which music is written. Others who have come before me have had to struggle in that role. I choose to pull equal weight and receive equal treatment.

Where do you find inspiration for your compositions?

I’m often inspired by nature, memories, people and their writings, most anything, really. The inspiration for “Doppler Effect” (1998-2017), one of my most-performed works, came from the sound of an ambulance I heard while sitting at a café in Rome.

For “Alaskan Symphony” (2006-2007), I took seven research trips to Alaska as I began composing. The first movement, “Facing the Elements,” was inspired by the changing of seasons on the Kenai Peninsula. The second movement, a woodwind quintet titled “Animalogy,” (which won first prize on the Aero Quintet competition and was performed at Carnegie Hall) features instruments that depict the variety of animals found on the peninsula and their daily tasks and pleasures. “A Place Called Home,” the third and final movement, represents the remarkable people who live on the Kenai Peninsula, their lives of unity, hope and peace. Sometimes I am inspired by deeply personal experiences.

“Courage for Winds” (2009) was an outgrowth of my battle with breast cancer. Courage speaks to the strength in all of us to overcome adversity in our lives. “A Choral Quilt of Hope” (2011) came from an adaptation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Susan Suntree that I set to music.

What are you working on currently?

“Sunrise,” an orchestra piece with Native American flutes in mind. I feel that we are all people of the United States, a melting pot of cultures and ideas.

What advice do you have for young people interested in a career in music?

Learn as much as you can about the industry and have something to fall back on. Love your instrument and play it even if you are not working in the field of music because for some people, it is not always possible to work full-time in music.

All singers should learn to read music and learn to play an instrument. I am grateful to have been trained in piano. Piano is like an orchestra and taught me the language of music. It also provided a good foundation to my musical background.

Be open-minded in your creative pursuits. Creativity has no boundaries. As a creative person, you can become an artist, a composer, a writer, a designer, a cook. Don’t limit yourself to doing only one thing.

ACME Nominations

ACME recognition highlights the strengths and accomplishments of our fraternity’s Artists, Composers, Musicologists and Educators. We encourage members to nominate deserving, actively affiliated candidates who have achieved national and/or international acclaim in their music fields for ACME consideration. Learn more at muphiepsilon.org.