Born in New York City on 6 February 1941, Albert began his musical training on the piano, French horn, and trumpet as a youngster.

He first studied composition at the age of 15 with Elie Siegmeister, and enrolled two years later at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Bernard Rogers.

Following composition lessons in Stockholm with Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Albert

studied with Joseph Castaldo at the Philadelphia Musical Academy (BM 1962); in 1963 he worked with George Rochberg at the University of Pennsylvania.

Stephen Albert won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his symphony RiverRun, and from 1985 to 1988 served as composer-in-residence with the Seattle Symphony.

He received commissions from the Chicago, National, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Seattle symphonies, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress.

Among his other awards and honors were two MacDowell Colony fellowships, a Huntington Hartford Fellowship, two Guggenheim fellowships, two Rome Prizes, and grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the Alice M. Ditson Foundation.

From 1988 to the time of his death, he was professor of composition at the Juilliard School of Music.