He left school in his teens and played saxophone in a Dixieland band led by Muggsy Spanier. When he was with the Georgie Auld band, he learned about arranging with Budd Johnson.[3] By 1950 Albam was concentrating less on performing and more on writing and arranging.
Albam wrote arrangements for Leonard Bernstein's score for the musical West Side Story in 1957.[5] The work earned him a Grammy Award nomination in 1959. He was invited by Bernstein to write for the New York Philharmonic, and he began to study classical music with Tibor Serly, eventually writing Quintet for Trombone and Strings.[5] He also wrote music for movies, television, and commercials.[3] In the early 1960s he became music director for Solid State Records.[3] For the rest of his career, he taught at Glassboro State College, Eastman School of Music, and Manhattan School of Music.[3] He helped start and lead the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop.[3]
↑Strunk, Steven; Kernfeld, Barry (2002). Barry Kernfeld (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz Vol. 1 (2nded.). New York: Grove's Dictionaries. p.24. ISBN1561592846.
