Albert James Fillmore became a friend and colleague to numerous music lovers throughout his long career as a pianist, composer, and teacher. He was one of Nadia Boulanger's students in France just prior to World War II. I had been aware of his beautiful music for some time, and had even played his preludes in my 1994 concerts ("The Muse of Chopin") at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland. Consequently, I felt a need to promote his music after his death in 1996. My idea was to locate representative compositions and create an anthology of high-quality recordings so that people who knew Albert, as well as those young musicians who never had the opportunity of knowing him, could appreciate his work. It was a logical extension for my wife Jean--who helped care for Albert as he recovered from knee surgery, and has always enjoyed writing--to compile his biography based upon a lengthy diary he kept, in addition to recollections and stories about him.

Furthermore, it seemed appropriate to build a non-prof