Albert played his first paying trombone gigs while still in high school in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the 1980s, and moved to New Orleans in 1988, where he remained an active scene member until 2023. He studied at Loyola University New Orleans and the University of New Orleans, where his teachers included Ellis Marsalis, Harold Battiste, Ed Petersen, and Steve Masakowski, and in May 2013 he became the first graduate of LSU's PhD program in Experimental Music and Digital Media, where he was a founding member of the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana (LOLs).
He has played trombone, bass trombone, bass trumpet, and laptop with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Orleans Opera, Jefferson Performing Arts Society, Verispel New Music, and Musaica, and can be heard on New Orleans-recorded film soundtracks including the 2019 Best Picture winner Green Book. He has accompanied Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, Stevie Wonder, Lou Rawls, Johnny Mathis, Natalie Cole, and Peter Cetera.
In New Orleans music, he has been one of George Porter Jr.'s Runnin' Pardners since 2003 and was horn arranger and trombonist for The Meters from 2015 until their final performance in 2017. He played in Wardell Quezergue's big band, Luther Kent and Trick Bag, and Zigaboo Modeliste's Foundation of Funk, and wrote the horn parts and played trombone on Bobby Rush's “Porcupine Meat,” which won the 2017 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album. His 2020 record Unanimous Sources was named a top-10 jazz record of the year in the Boston Globe, and he has been named a Rising Star trombonist in the DownBeat Critics Poll. He joined the Georgia Tech School of Music faculty in August 2023 after teaching at Loyola University New Orleans from 2010 to 2023.
