Alice Swanson

Alice Theresa Hildagard Swanson Esty (November 8, 1904 – July 21, 2000) was an American actress, soprano, and arts patron whose Broadway career spanned two decades and whose later work as a commissioner of new music left a substantial legacy in the concert repertoire.

Swanson earned a degree from Bates College in 1925 and subsequently relocated to New York City to pursue training in both singing and acting. She became affiliated with two significant theatrical organizations: the Group Theater, under the direction of Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, and the Provincetown Players, an avant-garde company. Her Broadway appearances ran from 1928 to 1948 and included the musical Heaven on Earth, the musical A Lady Says Yes, and the play Him. She also appeared in the play Come of Age alongside Judith Anderson, and in L'Aiglon with Ethel Barrymore.

During the 1930s, Swanson married William C. Esty, founder of the William Esty Advertising Agency. In the years that followed, Esty directed her energies increasingly toward the commissioning and performance of new musical works. Between 1955 and 1969 she regularly commissioned compositions from French and American composers and performed them at venues including Town Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall. She spent considerable time in Paris during the late 1950s and early 1960s, where she developed relationships with numerous composers and artists. Among the French composers whose works she commissioned were Germaine Tailleferre, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Henri Sauguet. American composers including Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, Marc Blitzstein, and Paul Bowles were also among those she commissioned. She additionally commissioned Poulenc's Sonata for Two Pianos for the American piano duo Gold and Fizdale. In 1963, following the death of Francis Poulenc, Esty organized and performed a memorial concert at Carnegie Recital Hall featuring works by both French and American composers commissioned for the occasion.

Esty's connection to Bates College remained active throughout her life. A donation of one million dollars from Esty established the Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music position at the college, and in 1984 she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the institution. Between 1994 and 1995, she donated the manuscripts of many of her commissioned works to the Bates College library, where they remain. Esty died of cancer in New York on July 21, 2000.