T.J. Anderson was the first Black composer to hold the title of composer-in-residence with an American symphony orchestra. That was in Atlanta, when Robert Shaw was the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. For Atlanta, Anderson orchestrated Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha, resulting in the first full staging of that 1911 work, about 60 years after it was written, a performance that was broadcast on NPR in 1972.
In addition to orchestrating Joplin’s opera, Anderson wrote a few of his own, including Soldier Boy and Walker, which was based on the life of David Walker, an anti-slavery activist.
One of Anderson’s concert works, Squares, was premiered on today’s date in 1966 by the Oklahoma Symphony and later recorded by the Baltimore Symphony for inclusion in a now-classic set of recordings issued by Columbia Records in 1970, The Black Composer Series.
Squares is abstract and modernist, perhaps reflecting Anderson’s academic background of composition studies at the esteemed Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and with French composer Darius Milhaud at the Aspen School of Music. Before his retirement in 1990, Anderson also taught composition at several universities from Massachusetts to California.
T.J. Anderson (b. 1928): Squares (Baltimore Symphony, Paul Freeman, cond.) Sony 86215