Adolphus Hailstork
b. April 17, 1941
American composer and professor of music Adolphus Hailstork was born in Rochester, New York in 1941 and grew up in Albany, New York. He began his musical studies with piano lessons as a child and began composing during the 1950s as a high school student.
He studied at Howard University (1963) and the Manhattan School of Music (1965/1966). After service in the US Armed Forces in Germany (1966–1968), he returned to the United States and pursued his doctoral degree at Michigan State University in Lansing (1971).
Hailstork has served as professor at Youngstown State University in Ohio (1971-1977), as well as professor of music and Composer-in-Residence at Virginia’s Norfolk State University (1977-2000). He is currently a professor of music and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Hailstork received a star on Norfolk’s Legends of Music Walk of Fame in 2017. The Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony and National Symphony Orchestra have all performed works by Dr. Hailstork over the years and he was proclaimed a Virginia Cultural Laureate in 1992.
Hailstork writes in a variety of forms and styles: symphonic works and tone poems for orchestra; a piano concerto; numerous chamber works; duos for such combinations as horn and piano, clarinet and piano, flute and piano, and others; a large number of songs including songs for soprano, baritone, mezzo-soprano, some with piano and others with orchestra or chamber group; band works and band transcriptions, and many pieces for piano.
According to his website, “Hailstork’s newest works include THE WORLD CALLED (based on Rita Dove’s poem TESTIMONIAL), a work for soprano, chorus and orchestra commissioned by the Oratorio Society of Virginia (premiered in May 2018) and STILL HOLDING ON (February 2019) an orchestra work commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is currently working on his Fourth Symphony, and A KNEE ON A NECK (tribute to George Floyd) for chorus and orchestra.”
If you’d like to learn more about Adolphus Hailstork, here are some items from the Music Library’s collection:
* Hailstork, Adolphus (Reference entry from The Grove Dictionary of American Music via Oxford Online)
* Dance Like the Wind: Music of Today’s Black Composers (CD)
* Symphonic Brotherhood: The Music of African-American Composers (CD)
* Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (Score)
* Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers (Score)
* African-American Organ Music Anthology (Score)
* Musical Landscapes in Color: Conversations with Black American Composers (Book)
* “An Interview With Adolphus Hailstork” (1999 journal article by Gene Brooks from The Choral Journal)
