Percussionist, composer and assistant professor Dr. Thad Anderson is releasing an album of original compositions entitled Lines & Spaces: The Music of Thad Anderson on Ravello Records, out May 10. Anderson frequently collaborates with fellow faculty, students, alumni and guest artists, and has been featured on or helped to produce nine prior albums. Of the fifteen tracks on Lines & Spaces, eleven are Anderson’s original compositions.
The album is full of UCF associations: with the exception of guest artists Korry Friend, Marja Kerney and Rose Grace, everyone on the album is an alumni or faculty member at the university.
The opening track, “Withheld“, was the first piece that was composed and recorded for the project. “It was nearly 10 years in the making,” comments Anderson.
Anderson coordinates the percussion studies program in the UCF School of Performing Arts and directs the percussion ensemble, coordinating concerts with guest artists such as The Percussion Collective. He also began the new music ensemble to help students interested in composing have a dedicated space to experiment and perform new works.
The record label releasing the album, Parma Recordings, interviewed Anderson about the new album and his process:
“Composer, percussionist, and music educator Thad Anderson is a faculty member at the University of Central Florida where he has roles in the percussion, composition, and music technology fields. Actively composing in instrumental, electronic, and multimedia genres, Thad has composed pieces for artists including the Omojo Percussion Duo, George Weremchuk, Grand Valley State University, Nora Lee Garcia, the Heisler/Yeh Duo, the Patterns Quartet, and Korry Friend. He frequently collaborates with immersive visual artist Diana Reichenbach and composed music for the award-winning documentary film Standard Deviation. His Ravello Records release LINES AND SPACES is based on Thad’s own compositional technique called “duration lines” that create both structure and polyrhythmic interest.”
Continue reading Anderson’s interview: The Inside Story: Thad Anderson and LINES & SPACES