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Gene Brooks
Editor's note: Adolphus Hailstork received his doctorate in composition from Michigan State University, where he was a student of H. Owen Reed. He studied previously at Manhattan School of Music under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, at the American Institute at Fountainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and at Howard University with Mark Fax. Dr. Hailstork currently is on the faculty of Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he is Professor of Music and teacher of composition. ACDA commissioned a choral work from him for the 1999 Chicago National Convention. It will be performed by the Oklahoma State University Choir, Jerry McCoy, conductor.
Gene: I am in Norfolk, Virginia with Adolphus Hailstork. Today is Tuesday, December 15, 1998. Adolphus, we will let you start by telling us about your background, your young life, where you started music, and your influences. Just talk as you like.
Adolphus: I was born in Rochester, New York, but I grew up in Albany. The first instrument I ever played was the violin, and I kept playing violin through high school. Then I started singing when I was in junior high school. At the same time, or even before that, the Cathedral of All Saints, which is a high-church Episcopal Cathedral in Albany, was looking to transform the choir from a women and men's choir to a boys' and men's choir. They were looking for boys who might be interested. The choir director's wife came to speak in our school. I was in the fifth grade. I went down and applied, and I got in.
That is where I learned how to read and where I had my first piano lessons. Also, I started taking organ lessons. By the time I was sixteen, I was the summer organist. I was still playing violin in high school, and it was in high school that I started composing music at the encouragement of the local high school orchestra director, Gertrude Howarth. She said, "If you write it, we will play it." I wrote pieces for the high school orchestra and for the high school choir. It just seemed natural to me. I conducted a boy's choral group, which was called the "Albanians." The nine of us would do performances on...