Albany High graduate calls composition performance at inauguration a ‘high honor’ | The Daily Gazette SECTIONS Shares0 Adolphus Hailstork considers a lesson from an Albany High School orchestra conductor the most impressive piece of teaching he had in his early life. “When I got to high school, I started composing,” Hailstork said. “And the orchestra teacher said, ‘If you write it, we’ll play it.’ It was wonderful. I had the chance to write for our orchestra.” That experience helped Hailstork continue on his path toward composition — a path that led him to decades of success, being commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony among others, becoming a professor of music theory and composition at Old Dominion University in 2000 and, as of recently, hearing his work performed during one of the United States’ most important ceremonies.