Monday,
March 12th, 2012 at 8:00 p.m. In Front of My Eyes: A Celebration of Music by and for Thomas Jefferson Anderson at the Granoff Music Center, 20 Talbot Avenue, Tufts University
Medford/Somerville Campus.
Featuring: T.J.
Anderson, Stephen Jaffe, and Paul Siskind, guest composers; Elye Alexander,
poet; Louise Toppin, soprano; Borromeo String Quartet; BeatCity Art Ensemble
(with Amy Advocat, clarinets, Dave Fabris, guitars, Robert Schulz, percussion);
John McDonald, piano
TUFTs university department of music presents: In front of my
eyes: A CELEBRATION
OF MUSIC BY AND FOR THOMAS JEFFRSON ANDERSON; a special Tufts composers event
Medford/Somerville, MA – The
Tufts University Department of Music presents a special Tufts Composers event, a concert entitled “In Front of My Eyes, A Celebration of Music by and for Thomas Jefferson
Anderson” in the Distler Performance
Hall at the Perry and Marty Granoff
Music Center on Monday, March 12th,
2012 at 8 p.m. With a title taken
from his work In Front of My Eyes: An Obama Celebration (with
text by Robert Pinsky), this concert celebrates the musical inspirations that
have led to Tufts Music Professor Emeritus T.J. Anderson’s prominence and
influence as an African-American setting trends and asserting personality in
classical music. Composers Stephen Jaffe (Duke University) and Tufts graduate
and former Anderson student Paul Siskind (Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam)
join the celebration by offering their new works in honor of Anderson,
performed by the stellar Borromeo String Quartet, soprano Louise Toppin
(performing a new Anderson work with poetry by Elye Alexander), the BeatCity
Art Ensemble, and Tufts Music Professor and pianist John McDonald.
The concert will be
preceded by two other events on the same day. From 4:30-6:30 p.m.,
composers Anderson, Jaffe, and Siskind will host a symposium with poet
Alexander, discussing the interplay between music and words. The
symposium will take place in Granoff Room 251 as part of the Tufts Composers
Seminar. Immediately following the symposium, join the speakers at a
dual-reception for the concert and Pierrot Project Exhibition in the Slater
Concourse next door in the Aidekman Arts Center.
T.J.
Anderson is one of the leading composers of his generation. He was
born August 17, 1928 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania and received degrees from
West Virginia State College, Penn State University, and a Ph.D in Composition
from the University of Iowa. He also holds several honorary degrees. After
serving as Chairman of the Department of Music at Tufts University for eight
years, Thomas Jefferson Anderson became Austin Fletcher Professor of Music and
in 1990 became Austin Fletcher Professor of Music Emeritus. He now lives in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he devotes full time to writing music.
Mr. Anderson studied composition with
George Ceiga, Philip Bezanson, Richard Hervig, and Darius Milhaud. Anderson is
well known for his orchestration of Scott Joplin's opera, Treemonisha, which premiered in Atlanta in 1972. His first opera, Soldier Boy, Soldier (based on a
libretto by Leon Forrest), was commissioned by Indiana University. The opera Walker was commissioned by the Boston
Athenaeum with a libretto by Derek Walcott and Slip Knot, commissioned by the School of Music of Northwestern
University, is based on a historical paper by T.H. Breen with libretto by Yusef
Komunyakaa.
Professor Timothy Breen read the
following citation when Anderson received an honorary degree from Northwestern
University in 2002: “If music is the universal language, you are a celestial linguist.
With artistry, craft and imagination, you translate your understanding of the
human experience into melody, reaching our hearts by way of our ears.”
The Granoff Music Center is located at 20 Talbot Avenue on
Tufts’ Medford/Somerville campus. Admission to all
events is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit as.tufts.edu/music/musiccenter or call the Granoff Music Center Box Office at
617.627.3679.
