"My students can e-mail me their music so I can open it and listen to it on my computer, then I e-mail it back to them with my changes."

-Robert Aldridge

Composer Robert Aldridge creates beautiful music when he runs his fingers across the keyboard. But the keys he tickles aren't always the ivories on a Steinway. Sometimes they're the ebonies on a MacIntosh computer.

Into his second year at Montclair State, Aldridge has brought music composition on campus into the 21st century by introducing his classes to a software program called Finale. By combining traditional music composition techniques with modern technology, students in the Music Department are taking their craft to new levels of excellence. Aldridge not only invests his time, but also has invested his own money to instill in his students a passion for classical music.

A founding member of the Composers in Red Sneakers, a consortium that achieved international recognition in the '80s, Aldridge, who holds a bachelor's degree in English, has written more than 60 works that often reveal his background in literature. He recently talked about some of his work, including a piece commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (NJSO), and his opera, "Elmer Gantry," which will be given its full stage world premiere in 2004.

Q. How did you go from a bachelor's degree in English to a doctoral degree in music composition?
A. I'd always been involved in music as a kid on an amateur level. I played in bands during high school and in college, and I sang in choruses. I probably had enough credits for a music degree in college, but it wasn't that important to me at the time. I took a couple years off, then went to graduate school for music at the New England Conservatory at Harvard. After that I taught in Boston for 10 years, then came back to New York, did some adjunct work and went for a doctorate so I could land a tenure track teaching job. That was fairly late in my career. I was 40 when I was accepted to the Yale School of Music.

Q. Tell us about your musical financial investment.
A. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (NJSO) sponsors a program called Sound Investments, and last year 100 people each gave $200 to help commission an orchestra piece for the New Jersey Symphony. I contributed because I saw it as a way to get my students involved in NJPAC. NJSO is the premiere arts organization in the state with an annual budget of $15 million and an educational outreach program, so I think we should be involved with them. A lot of my students have never been to a symphony concert--and they're music majors. It's tremendously important that they get this type of exposure, because a lot of them are going to become teachers in New Jersey public schools. There's a big education component here.

Q. How has technology changed the structure of your classes?
A. We're using a software program called Finale. The dean [Geoffrey Newman of the School of the Arts] generously provided funding to set up a state-of-the-art, six-station student music computer lab, with mini keyboards and synthesizers hooked up to Apple computers. My students can e-mail me their music so I can open it and listen to it on my computer, then I e-mail it back to them with my changes.
.
Q. What is the story behind Composers in Red Sneakers?
A. When you get out of graduate school as a composer, the world is not waiting for you with open arms. Some friends and I wanted to perform our own words and music in Cambridge and Boston, and we wanted to deflate the often-serious world of classical music composition. So we formed a group called Composers in Red Sneakers, and people who wore red sneakers got into concerts free. It became wildly successful, and in part is how I got this job. David Witten of Music was in Boston at the time and played in some of these concerts. He was on the search committee and remembered my name.

Q. Tell us about works in progress.
A. My opera, "Elmer Gantry," which I’ve been working on for 10 years, is based on the Sinclair Lewis novel about a corrupt preacher. It's going to be performed in Tulsa, Germany and Finland in 2004. "The Third Person," a musical I've been working on for three years, was performed last summer in TheatreFest and was picked up by a London producer. It's going to open in London either this spring or in the fall. It's a ghost story based on a Henry James short story about two women who inherit a house the coast of what was South Carolina. Now that it's being done in London it is reset to the coast of England.
The New Jersey Symphony commissioned me to do an orchestra piece for a concert they are going to perform in February 2003. It's a tone poem based on "Leda and the Swan." It's perfect for music because it has all the stuff that makes for good music: love, sex, betrayal and deception. I'm also working on a piece for the Montclair State symphonic band that's going to be done in April at their spring concert. It's called "War Stories," a 10-minute piece that deals with the themes of war.

Go back to the Insight index