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William Albright was an American composer, pianist and organist.
Albright was born in Gary, Indiana, and began learning the piano at the age of five, and attended the Juilliard Preparatory Department, the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, where he studied composition with Ross Lee Finney and George Rochberg, and organ with Marilyn Mason. He interrupted his studies for the 1968–69 academic year when he received a Fulbright scholarship to study with Olivier Messiaen in Paris. Upon his graduation in 1970 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he taught until his death from liver failure in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1998.
His music combined elements of tonal and non-tonal classical music with American popular music and non-Western music, in what has been described as "polystylistic" or "quaquaversal" music —which makes the definition of an overall style difficult. In particular, he was an enthusiast for ragtime.
In addition to his compositional and teaching activities, he pursued an active career as an organist and commissioned new works for this instrument from other contemporary composers to play on his concert tours of North America and Europe. His hymns appear in hymnals of the Unitarian and Episcopalian Churches.
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