Mark Alburger (born April 2, 1957 in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania; died June 20, 2023 in

Vacaville, California Vacaville is a city located in Solano County, California, United States. It is located from Sacramento, California, Sacramento and from San Francisco, it is on the edge of the Sacramento Valley in Northern California. The city was founded in ...

) was a

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

Bay area

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

and conductor. He was the founder and music director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, as well as the music director of Goat Hall Productions / San Francisco Cabaret Opera. Alburger was also the editor-publisher of ''21st-Century Music Journal'', which he founded in 1994 as ''20th-Century Music''.

Biography

Alburger studied composition with Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the e ...

; Jules Langert at the Dominican University of California; and Roland Jackson, Thomas Flaherty, and Christopher Yavelow at

Claremont Graduate University The Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, all-graduate research university in Claremont, California, United States. Founded in 1925, CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges consortium which includes five undergraduate and two grad ...

, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in Musicology in 1996. He also studied privately thereafter with

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist music, minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notab ...

. Alburger was best known for his use of troping techniques, combining structures and musical passages from a wide variety of pre-existing works across cultures and eras. He has a large opus list, including many concerti, operas, song cycles, symphonies, and a thirteen-hour theatrical setting of the Bible. As a music journalist, he has published interviews with many notable composers across the new music scene, including Henry Brant,

Earle Brown Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of "open form," a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since, ...

George Crumb George Henry Crumb Jr. (24 October 1929 – 6 February 2022) was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical ...

, Anthony Davis, Paul Dresher,

Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...

, Ali Akbar Khan, Joan La Barbara, Steve Mackey,

Tod Machover Tod Machover (born November 24, 1953, in Mount Vernon, New York), is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a piano, pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist. He was named ...

Meredith Monk Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recordi ...

, Pauline Oliveros,

Steve Reich Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer best known as a pioneer of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich descr ...

, Erling Wold, Christian Wolff, and Pamela Z, and was a contributor to

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and t ...

. Dr. Alburger died on June 20, 2023 in Vacaville, California, and is survived by his partner Harriet March Page, a mezzo-soprano and artistic director of Goat Hall Productions / San Francisco Cabaret Opera.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Alburger, Mark 1957 births Living people 20th-century American classical composers 21st-century classical composers American male classical composers People from Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania 21st-century American composers Classical musicians from Pennsylvania 20th-century American male musicians 21st-century American male musicians