Hailstork Honored with ASCAP Award

Old Dominion University Music Professor, eminent scholar and composer Adolphus Hailstork has been chosen as an ASCAP Award recipient this year. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is a performing rights organization that distributes royalties to its members in popular media. The ASCAP Award is designed to show appreciation for composers whose work is not widely considered a part of mainstream music.

As a member of ASCAP, Hailstork's musical compositions were chosen for the cash award by a panel of musical professionals. In judging his work, they considered its prestige and value. They also considered Hailstork's activity as a composer and how often his work is performed.

Though Hailstork has been a professor at ODU since 2000, he began his music career as a child playing the violin. From there, he joined the choir and studied the piano and organ. In junior high, Hailstork began conducting and went on to composing. Hailstork described his musical style as having three different approaches: standard modern, avant-garde boutique and roots.

Hailstork graduated from Howard University in 1963 with a Bachelor of Music. He went on to attend the Manhattan School of Music where he received another Bachelor of Music, this time in Composition, in 1965 and a Master of Music in Composition in 1966. In 1971, Hailstork obtained a Ph.D. from Michigan State University. He has been teaching music for 37 years.

This year, the ASCAP Concert Music Division panel was comprised of JoAnn Falletta, who conducts the Buffalo Philharmonic and Virginia Symphony Orchestras; H. Robert Reynolds, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan; and Steve Smith, music editor for Time Out NY and classical music critic for The New York Times.