Milton Adolphus

Irving Milton Adolphus (January 27, 1913 – August 16, 1988)[1] was an American pianist and composer.

He was also a founding member of the American Composers Alliance[2] (of which Aaron Copland was the first president); involved extensively with the Curtis Institute of Music; a board member of the League of Composers; Director of the Philadelphia Music Center[3] and active in the US civil rights movement.

[5] He was appointed director of the Philadelphia Music Center in 1936,[6] and in 1938 moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he worked for the Department of Labor and Industry of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania until his retirement in West Harwich, where he organized the Chatham Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.

During the 1920s and early 1930s, Adolphus played with many jazz bands and orchestras in the vaudeville circuit in New York's Catskill Mountains and in New York City, including Irving "Ving" Merlin, with whom he composed I Can't Believe It.

The BMI Foundation distributes the Milton Adolphus Award, which is given every year at New York City's LaGuardia High School for Performing Arts to a student for excellence in jazz improvisation.