Alfred Bartles belongs to the first generation of so-called cross-over musicians: People who feel themselves equally at home in both classical and jazz disciplines. Following piano studies with Lennie Tristano, he worked as arranger-pianist for the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He holds a Masters in Composition from Ohio University, where he studied with Karl Ahrendt. He studied cello with Claus Adam and Luigi Silva, and went on to play professionally in the St. Louis Symphony, Broadway shows and the Mantovani orchestra. In the early 1960's his compositions began to be published. In 1968 he founded the composition program at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival in Tennessee. After many career successes and traveling the world, he returned definitively to Nashville in 1997 where he's an active composer-arranger and teaches cello.