The composer Alvin Singleton was born in Brooklyn and attended New York University and the Yale School of Music. A Fulbright fellowship first brought him to Rome in 1971, where he studied at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He continued to live and work in Europe for fourteen years.

From 1985 to 1988, Singleton was composer-in-residence at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Residencies at Spelman College, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Ritz Chamber Players of Jacksonville, Florida, followed. His orchestral work When Given a Choice, commissioned by the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation and the American Composers Orchestra, premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2004. His compositions, for theater, orchestra, solo instruments, and chamber ensembles, have been performed widely in the United States and in Europe, as well as at numerous international music festivals.

Singleton is the recipient of the 2003 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, fourteen MacDowell Fellowships, and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among other prizes and awards. His music is published by Schott Music.

The photograph of Alvin Singleton was taken by Jo Eldredge Morrissey.