Born in 1949, in Kingston, Jamaica, Eleanor Alberga began her musical career learning the piano at the age of five.  She later gained the only biennial West Indian Associated Board scholarship, which she took up at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she has retained links as guest lecturer / composer.

She spent three years performing with authentic African dance company and has sung with internationally celebrated Jamaican Folk Singers.  She is also a professional pianist.  Her compositional activity began with writing for London Contemporary Dance Theatre.  This has led to a wide range of concert music encompassing, besides electronic scores, works for orchestra, choral and chamber ensembles, and pieces for solo instruments.

Her many commissions encompass a wide
range of solo and chamber music as well as orchestral works. Mythologies  was premiered in June 2000 with Leonard Slatkin conducting. Other recent commissions include three String Quartets for the Maggini and Smith Quartets; Dancing with Shadows for Lontano; and Glinting, Glancing Shards for the Delta Saxophone Quartet. She was invited to participate in the prestigious Composer to Composer Festival in Colorado, USA, and was a featured composer at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival. Her violin concerto was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and premiered with her husband Thomas Bowes as soloist in November 2001. The Times  commented "It is rare, in etiolated world of contemporary music, for a composer to be called back to the stage three times by an enthusiastic audience after the first performance of a work. But that was the reception accorded Alberga after the premiere of her new violin concerto."

Eleanor Alberga was the first composer to be commissioned for the inaugural Festival of Women in Music.

Eleanor Alberga has established herself in the mainstream of British contemporary music and now enjoys an international reputation as a composer.  Her music has been performed by many leading orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Bournemouth Sinfonietta, London Mozart Players and the Women's Philharmonic of San Francisco, with performances in countries as far afield as Australia and China.  Among her many acclaimed projects is her adaptation of Roald Dahl's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which received its premiere at the Royal Festival Hall in 1994 with Franz Welser Möst and the LPO.

Eleanor Alberga and Thomas Bowes! Remember their names, because long after the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association can no longer afford them, you'll be hearing about this phenomenal husband-and-wife duo.  They make up Double Exposure, the violin/piano team that left its audience aghast Saturday
night at the Pollard Auditorium.

Subscribers to the Chamber Music series were riveted by Double Exposure. The musical intimacy, the superior technique and the fresh and free-wheeling rhythmic aplomb of these two musicians give them an edge over just about everybody, and they clearly are the best violin/piano duo most of us have ever heard.

Without flagging, Jamaican composer/pianist Eleanor Alberga and British violinist Thomas Bowes played a wickedly difficult program of show-stoppers. There was even steam left in the boiler for the encore, Wieniawski's devilish Tarantella.  It was only the audience that had to hold on to their seats.  This when they happily returned to them after a lengthy standing ovation.

Bach's Sonata for Violin and Keyboard in E major and Four Hungarian Dances  by Brahms, transcribed for violin and piano by Joachim, were the strong bookends to a wonderfully weighty program.

Bach's opening adagio in which melody was everything was a perfect choice to expose us to Bowes' amazingly beautiful, vibrant tone which he sustained all evening on his 1659 Amati violin.

Eleanor Alberga's The Wild Blue Yonder transported the listeners into a bewitching contemporary sound realm. The 1995 composition, she explained, is something like landing on a strange planet and watching it go from the brink of instability to complete instability before it tries a reconciliation that in the end does not work.

Individually and together the couple was shockingly electric!  It's a good thing that Alberga is not easily disoriented at the piano. In her piece and in Bartok's Sonata No. 2, there were frequent shifts in both hands to the extreme ends of the piano.  Not only did she make the leaps effortlessly, she adjusted her tone to effect tone colors apart.  She is one
very talented pianist/composer.

She has recently been awarded a NESTA [National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts] scholarship to develop and experiment with compositional techniques and ideas.