T.J. Anderson Elected to AAAL

Composer T.J. Anderson is among the eight new members elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters for 2005. He will be inducted at the annual ceremonial held in May in good company. Also elected this year are architects Maya Lin and James Stewart Polshek, landscape architect Laurie Olin, artists Kiki Smith and Cindy Sherman, playwright Tony Kushner, and poet Rosanna Warren.

Anderson is likely best known works such as the song cycle Songs of Illumination (1990), Squares (Essay for Orchestra, 1965) and Chamber Symphony (1968, recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra), and for the first complete orchestration of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha. His compositions are published by American Composers Edition, Inc., C.F. Peters, Carl Fisher, and Bote & Bock in Germany.

Born in 1928 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, Anderson earned degrees from West Virginia State College, Penn State University, and the University of Iowa. He studied composition with George Ceiga, Philip Bezanson, Richard Hervig, and Darius Milhaud. He has held teaching positions at Tennessee State University, Morehouse College, and Tufts University, where he is currently the Austin Fletcher Professor of Music Emeritus. He resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he writes music fulltime.

Writing for Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, Elliott Schwartz noted, “Many African-American composers of ‘classical’ music are confronted by a unique set of experiences—influences from two worlds, so to speak. Thomas Jefferson Anderson has successfully balanced both; his music speaks to, and draws from, the heritage of European Art Music and the culture of Black America.”