Richard Albagli is Principal Percussionist with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, co-founder of the Adirondack Percussion Ensemble, and a member of the music faculties of the University at Albany and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has appeared, several times, as soloist or co-soloist with the Albany Symphony, performing works by Creston, Bartok, Hovhaness, and Russell Peck.
As co-founder of Associated Solo Artists, Albagli has helped create interdisciplinary programs in the arts, sciences, and humanities for schools from kindergarten through college. ASA's trademark "Concert of Ideas" and its programs for the corporate, professional, and governmental sectors in creativity and leadership development have been presented in more than twenty states and in Europe and Canada, including the Center for Excellence in Maryland, the Center for Creative Leadership in North Carolina and California, the international ASCD Conference in San Antonio, the Academy of Management, the Excellence in Government conferences in Washington, the National Arts and Business Council in New York, the IDRIART conference in Europe, and at universities, business schools, and for a host of major corporate clients.
Richard Albagli has served as the Musical Director of the Empire State Youth Percussion Ensemble since its inception in 1983 and, along with co-Director mark Foster, has taken the group to major percussion festivals in New York City, New Jersey, and Florida; the Manhattan and Eastman Schools of Music; Queens, Williams, and Hartwick Colleges; and the Tanglewood Music Center. The Youth Ensemble has also performed at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, the "Musical Encounter" series for educational television, with ASO Conductor David Allen Miller, and on the nationally syndicated radio program, From the Top, aired on more than 250 National Public Radio stations.
A graduate of both the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (physics) and the Eastman School of Music (performance), Richard Albagli has composed more than twenty works for solo percussion and percussion ensemble, along with a timpani concerto and two works for ensemble and chorus. As a collaborator, with John Cimino and Jon Klibonoff of Associated Solo Artists, he has composed a dozen art songs for voice and percussion, a musical play for children entitled The Great Dinosaur Rescue, and a one-act opera, The Star Thrower, based upon a Loren Eiseley essay of the same name.