Eleanor Alberga

Eleanor Alberga was born in Kingston, Jamaica. She decided at the age of five to be a concert pianist and began composing short pieces. While still at school she played the guitar with the Jamaican Folk Singers.[1] She studied music at Jamaica School of Music and in 1970 she won the biennial West Indian Associated Board Scholarship which allowed her to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where one of her teachers was Richard Stoker.[1] After completing her studies, she performed as a concert pianist. In 2001 she ended her career as a performer to concentrate full-time on composition and was awarded a NESTA Fellowship.[2]

Alberga works as a guest lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She has been pianist and Music Director for the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and played with Nanquindo (four players on two pianos).[1] Her music has been performed by the Royal Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, Bournemouth Sinfonietta, London Mozart Players and The Women's Philharmonic of San Francisco, and in countries including Australia, South America, Canada, Europe and China.[3] As a composer Alberga uses tonal harmony and emphasises repeated rhythmic patterns. Some of the piano music in particular, such as the Jamaican Medley (1983), Hill and Gully Ride (1990) and 3 Day Mix (1991), draw on her Jamaican background in their use of colour and cross-rhythms.[4][5] The chamber work Nightscape: the Horniman Serenade (1983) uses elements of jazz.[1] Later pieces show an increasing use of dissonance[1] as in her three string quartets (1993, 1994 and 2001) which have been recorded by Ensemble Arcadiana.[6]

Alberga has received several high-profile commissions. Roald Dahl's 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' was commissioned by the Roald Dahl Foundation in 1994 and issued in conjunction with a book illustrated by Quentin Blake.[7] It has been widely performed in schools. A later recording by the Taliesin Orchestra in 2011 featured Danny DeVito, Griff Rhys Jones and Joanna Lumley as the narrators.[8] The opera Letters of a Love Betrayed, based on a short story from Isabel Allende's The Stories of Eva Luna, with a libretto by Donald Sturrock, was commissioned by Music Theatre Wales.[9] It opened at the Royal Opera House Linbury Studio in 2009 before touring England and Wales.[10] The choral work Arise, Athena!, setting her own text, was written to open the last night of the BBC Proms in 2015.[11]

She married violinist Thomas Bowes in 1992[12] and performs with him in a duo called Double Exposure.[13] He was the premiere soloist for both of her Violin Concertos (2001 and 2019).

• Eleanor Alberga official site
• Eleanor Alberga at AfriClassical.com
• Eleanor Alberga: Suite from Dancing with the Shadow (1990)
• A History of Black Classical Music (2020), BBC Radio 3 documentary researched and presented by Eleanor Alberga.