Sonata No 1 for piccolo, flute, alto flute and piano

Alec Wilder (1907-1980) was an American composer. Born in Rochester, New York in well-to-do family, he privately studied composition with Herman Inch and Edward Royce, then professors at the Eastman School of Music. Couldn’t fit in any school, he hired a lawyer while at his teenager years and divorced himself from his family, gaining substantial portion of the family's fortune.  His first song “All the King’s Horses” for Broadway show “Three’s a Crowd” gained attention and he gradually became a good friend with Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, writing some popular songs and gaining further popularity.
Besides pop songs and ballads Wilder broadened his musical explorations with jazz and classical compositions. Overall, he composed eleven operas, four musicals, music for six films and rather extensive amount of instrumental and chamber music. Among them – two compositions for flute: Air for Flute and Strings (1945) dedicated to Julius Baker, and Suite for Unaccompanied Flute (1975) for Virginia Nanzetta.