Mark Alburger (born April 2, 1957 in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania; died June 20, 2023 in Vacaville, California) was a San Francisco Bay area composer and conductor. He was the founder and music director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, as well as the music director of Goat Hall Productions / San Francisco Cabaret Opera. Alburger was also the editor-publisher of 21st-Century Music Journal, which he founded in 1994 as 20th-Century Music.
Biography
Alburger studied composition with Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti at Swarthmore College; Jules Langert at the Dominican University of California; and Roland Jackson, Thomas Flaherty, and Christopher Yavelow at Claremont Graduate University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in Musicology in 1996. He also studied privately thereafter with Terry Riley. Alburger is best known for his use of troping techniques, combining structures and musical passages from a wide variety of pre-existing works across cultures and eras. He has a large opus list, including many concerti, operas, song cycles, symphonies, and a thirteen-hour theatrical setting of the Bible.
As a music journalist, he has published interviews with many notable composers across the new music scene, including Henry Brant, Earle Brown, George Crumb, Anthony Davis, Paul Dresher, Philip Glass, Ali Akbar Khan, Joan La Barbara, Steve Mackey, Tod Machover, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Erling Wold, Christian Wolff, and Pamela Z, and is a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Dr. Alburger passed away on June 20, 2023 in Vacaville, California, and is survived by his partner Harriet March Page, a mezzo-soprano and artistic director of Goat Hall Productions / San Francisco Cabaret Opera.