Name Alec Wilder | Role Composer | |
 | ||
Birth name Alexander Lafayette Chew Wilder Born February 16, 1907 ( 1907-02-16 ) Movies Lot in Sodom, Ghost Ship, The Sand Castle, OPEN THE DOOR AND SEE ALL THE PEOPLE Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada Compositions I'll Be Around, I'll Be Around, Moon and Sand, Moon and Sand, While We're Young, While We're Young, Windy Nights, Windy Nights, Where Is the One?, Where Is the One?, Who Can I Turn To, Who Can I Turn To, Where Do You Go?, Where Do You Go?, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, South - To a Warmer Place, South - To a Warmer Place, Flute and Bongos no 1, Flute and Bongos no 1, Blue, Blue, Douglas Mountain, Douglas Mountain, River Run, River Run, When I Am Dead My Dearest, When I Am Dead My Dearest, All the Cats Join In, All the Cats Join In, I See It Now, I See It Now, Chick Lorimer, Chick Lorimer, A Long Night, A Long Night, Low in the Lehigh Valley, Low in the Lehigh Valley, Gray, Gray, The Wrong Blues, The Wrong Blues, Seal Lullaby, Seal Lullaby Similar People | ||
A child is born by thad jones and alec wilder
Alec Wilder (born Alexander Lafayette Chew Wilder in Rochester, New York, February 16, 1907; d. Gainesville, Florida, December 24, 1980) was an American composer.
Contents
- A child is born by thad jones and alec wilder
- ALEC WILDER Sonata No 1 for Horn and Piano 1954 Charles Tibbetts
- Biography
- Selected works
- Discography
- Albums as Composer
- References
ALEC WILDER: Sonata No. 1 for Horn and Piano (1954)- Charles Tibbetts
Biography
His family was prominent in Rochester; a downtown building (at the "Four Corners") bears the family's name. As a young boy, he traveled to New York City with his mother and stayed at the Algonquin Hotel. It would later be his home for the last 40 or so years of his life. He attended several prep schools, unhappily, as a teenager. Around this time, he hired a lawyer and essentially "divorced" himself from his family, gaining for himself some portion of the family fortune.
He was largely self-taught as a composer; he studied privately with the composers Herman Inch and Edward Royce, who taught at the Eastman School of Music in the 1920s, but never registered for classes and never received his degree. While there, he edited a humor magazine and scored music for short films directed by James Sibley Watson. Wilder was eventually awarded an honorary degree in 1973.
He was good friends with Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett and other luminaries of the American popular music canon. Among the popular songs he wrote or co-wrote were "I'll Be Around" (a hit for the Mills Brothers), "While We're Young" (recorded by Peggy Lee and many others), "Blackberry Winter", "Where Do You Go?" (recorded by Sinatra) and "It's So Peaceful in the Country". He also wrote many songs for the cabaret artist Mabel Mercer, including one of her signature pieces, "Did You Ever Cross Over to Sneden's?". Unusually for a composer, Wilder occasionally wrote his own lyrics including for his most famous song 'I'll Be Around'. Other lyricists he worked with included Loonis McGlohon, William Engvick, Johnny Mercer and Fran Landesman.
In addition to writing popular songs, Wilder also composed classical pieces for exotic combinations of orchestral instruments. The Alec Wilder Octet, including Eastman classmate Mitch Miller on oboe, recorded several of his originals for Brunswick Records in 1938-40. His classical numbers, which often had off-beat, humorous titles ("The Hotel Detective Registers"), were strongly influenced by jazz. He wrote eleven operas; one of which, Miss Chicken Little (1953), was commissioned for television by CBS. Sinatra conducted an album of Wilder's classical music. Wilder also arranged a series of Christmas carols for Tubachristmas.
Wilder wrote the definitive book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (1972). He was also featured in a radio series based on the book, broadcast in the middle to late 1970s. With lyricist Loonis McGlohon (his cohost on the radio series) he composed songs for the Land of Oz theme park in Banner Elk, North Carolina.
Wilder loved puzzles: he created his own cryptic crosswords, and could spend hours with a jigsaw puzzle. He also loved to talk (he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the world) and most of all, laugh. Displeased with how Peggy Lee improvised the ending of While We're Young, he wrote her a note: "The next time you come to the bridge [of the song], jump!" Pianist Marian McPartland told the story of this "alleged" comment to Tony Bennett on her "Piano Jazz" radio show in 2004.
Wilder is buried in a Catholic cemetery in Avon, New York, outside Rochester.
Selected works
Discography
Alec Wilder Octet (Columbia, 1951)
Albums as Composer
By Bob Brookmeyer
By Jackie Cain and Roy Kral
By Meredith D’Ambrosio
By Valerie Errante and Robert Wason
By Eileen Farrell
By Ghost Train Orchestra
By Roland Hanna
By Vic Juris
By Bob Levy
By Dave Liebman
By Mundell Lowe
By Marian McPartland
By Diana Robinson
By Bob Rockwell
By Ben Sidran
By Frank Sinatra
By Marlene VerPlanck