To say that Thomas Jefferson Anderson, or T.J. Anderson as he is commonly known, is one of the best and brightest contemporary Black American musicians would not be altogether fair: he has proven himself one of the best and brightest American musicians of any kind. Anderson is a prominent academic figure, a valuable composer, a gifted teacher, and a fine conductor; his success has been an inspiration to two generations of Black American classical musicians. Anderson started professional life not as a classical musician, but a jazz performer. Born in Coatesville, PA, in 1928, Anderson learned the piano as a child and before long was a traveling jazz pianist. He could not, however, resist the magnet of formal training and took a series of music degrees, including a doctorate, from West Virginia State College, Penn State University, and the University of Iowa, where he studied with Richard Hervig. Anderson joined the music faculty of Lanston University in Oklahoma in 1958 and then Tennessee State University in 1963. In 1964, he felt the pull of the magnet of training once again and spent the summer at Aspen studying composition with Darius Milhaud. After three seasons as composer-in-residence for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, he was named the head of music at Tufts University in Medford, MA, where he remained -- from 1978 on as an Austin Fletcher Professor of Music -- until 1990. During the 1990s, Anderson divided his time between a number of visiting faculty and composer-in-residence engagements (Northwestern University, Ohio State University, and California State University, for starters) and private composition at his home in North Carolina. He was twice honored with a Fromm Foundation Award (1964 and 1971) and in 1988-1989, received a Guggenheim Fellowship. His Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored completion and orchestration of Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha was warmly received at its 1972 premiere and did much to revitalize Joplin's reputation. Anderson's music is built from an eclectic base that allows the influence of avant-garde music, 20th century Western art music, African spirituals, jazz, African, and even Asian music as Anderson feels each individual piece demands. He has composed an operetta (The Shell Fairy, 1977), an opera (Soldier Boy, Soldier, 1982), and also three symphonies of various types: the Classical Symphony of 1961, the Symphony in 3 Movements, In Memoriam J.F.K. (1964), and the Chamber Symphony of 1968. Beyond this, he has favored the common musical genres -- orchestral, chamber, vocal -- nearly equally, except perhaps solo piano, which is represented by only about a half-dozen works. Anderson has remained active in retirement as a composer and especially as a scholar: he is the author of 13 articles, several of which have appeared since 1990. For the 2010-2011 season, he was resident composer at the Durham Symphony Orchestra in North Carolina. A work for solo trombone, In Memoriam Albert Lee Murray, appeared in 2013 and was included on the album George Lewis: The Will to Adorn, released by the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2017. Anderson has been frequently honored in later life. In 2005, he received an honorary doctorate from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and two years later, Tufts honored him with a similar degree. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005 and inducted into the Music Educators National Conference Hall of Fame in 2008. Anderson continues to live and work at his home in North Carolina.