Jay Althouse

b. 1951

Jay Althouse received a B.S. degree in Music Education and an M.Ed. degree in Music from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. For eight years he served as a rights and licenses administrator for a major educational music publisher. During that time he served a term on the Executive Board of the Music Publishers Association of America. As a composer of choral music, Jay has more than 700 works in print for choirs of all levels. His music is widely performed throughout the English-speaking world. He is a writer member of ASCAP and is a regular recipient of the ASCAP Special Award for his compositions in the area of standard music.

Jay has also co-written several children's musicals with his wife, Sally K. Albrecht, compiled and arranged a number of highly regarded vocal solo collections, and is the co-writer of the best-selling books The Complete Choral Warm-up Book and Accent on Composers, a reproducible source book for classroom music teachers featuring the music and lives of 22 composers. His most recent books are Sixty Music Quizzes, a supplemental book of music quizzes, and 50 One-Page Composer Bios, a reproducible book for the music classroom. He is the co-writer, with his wife, Sally, of I Hear America Singing, a choral work performed by the San Francisco Girls and Boys Choirs at the Inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.

Jay resides in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he has served on the board of the North Carolina Master Chorale.