Biography

William Anderson's reputation is derived from a great diversity of musical activities over the past 25 years-- committed performances with a great variety of ensembles and music festivals in the U.S and abroad; arrangements and compositions; work with the pioneering chamber ensemble, Cygnus, which he founded in 1985; performances with his guitar duo partner Oren Fader; and many ventures undertaken as Artistic Director of the Composers Guild of New Jersey.

David Denton in Fanfare exclaims: “Anderson’s playing is of a very high order of dexterity, virtuosity and brilliance, and is indicative of the tremendous advances made in guitar technique over the past four decades.”

--Anderson has performed with many of New York City's finest ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Chamber Players, Sequitur, the Group for Contemporary Music, the Da Capo Chamber Players.

--He founded the Cygnus Ensemble in 1985. Cygnus has built a substantial repertoire of chamber music with plucked strings.

--As a composer and arranger Anderson was the first to use a multiply partitioned array as an accompaniment to a 3-chord pop song (My Morphine--Welch/Anderson), This and other experiments in adapting modernist techniques to subversive, even populous ends, led Paul Griffiths, in the NY Times, to say:

“The mindful voice of Ives, of Stravinsky and of Mr. Wuorinen’s music would not seem to be implied much by such a song as “Night and Day,” but Mr. Anderson’s extraordinary arrangements of this and other numbers by Jerome Kern and Richard Rogers set them squarely and astonishingly in the same tradition...”

--Anderson is now working on the first in-depth critical study of Western plucked string music, entitled Einegezupfteweltanschauung (A Plucked Worldview). Portions of this work evolve gradually in connection with specific performances, immanently, Segovia, Magic Realist, on Feb. 18 2007.

At age 19 he began playing chamber music at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he performed from 1981 through 1988. In 1982 he began studying with America's premiere guitar pioneer David Starobin, who introduced him to the music community in New York City. His first solo recital was presented by the League of Composers/ISCM at Weill Hall, New York City (1990). He was also presented in recital by Music From Japan at the Asia Society (1993). He regularly appears in Washinton D.C.with the Theater Chamber Players at the Kennedy Center, performing both solo guitar and chamber music repertoire. Mr. Anderson has been a soloist in festivals and ensembles such as the Bang on a Can Festival, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and Modern Works! He has been heard on radio broadcasts on WNYC, WKCR, WGBH, and National Public Radio, Polish National Radio, Radio Bremen, and others.

Mr. Anderson appears on numerous recordings, and has given recitals and radio broadcasts in Europe, Mexico, Japan and the U.S. With Cygnus, he has performed in Denmark, Holland, Poland, Russia, Mexico and California. Cygnus also offers a series of three concerts each season at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, presenting important new works by America’s best composers. In the New Music Connoisseur, Leo Kraft wrote a review of a Cygnus performance in New York, saying, “If Mr. Anderson’s aim was to show how the guitar can play a significant role in chamber music, he certainly succeeded.” Anderson teaches guitar at Sarah Lawrence College and Queens College.