Pierre Jalbert began piano lessons at an early age and soon after began to compose. As a young man, he won several awards in both composition and piano, including two national prizes for composition in 1982 and 1984. After graduating from Oberlin Conservatory in 1989, he received a Javits Fellowship which enabled him to further his studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his doctorate in Composition at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 at age 25, where he studied with George Crumb. He has received numerous awards for his compositions, including a Guggenheim fellowship, two BMI Foundation Composition Awards, three ASCAP Foundation Awards, a Society of Composer's Award, the Bearns Prize in Composition, and a Tanglewood Music Center fellowship. Still in his late twenties, his compositions have been performed throughout the United States in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Louisville, Baltimore, and San Francisco. He has received commissions from the Vermont Symphony, the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, Zeitgeist, and the New York Youth Symphony, which held a Carnegie Hall concert in December, 1992. He recently completed a string quartet for the Maia Quartet who performed
the work at Lincoln Center (Alice Tully Hall). His music is published by Theodore Presser Company and he currently teaches at Rice University in Houston where he is Assistant Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the Shepherd School of Music.
Web: http://www.duo46.com/Jalbert.html (2000)