Music

Tommy Joe Anderson (born Bristol, Va., 1947) began his piano studies in Wytheville, Va., with Loretta Hannon and Rudolph BeCraft. He continued study with Henry Black at Shenandoah Conservatory of Music, receiving a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance, and with Herman Godes at West Virginia University, receiving the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in composition. His primary composition teacher was Thomas Canning at WVU.

Anderson has been awarded composition commissions from the West Virginia Arts and Humanities Council, the Music Teachers National Association & Georgia Music Teachers Association and the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra. He was presented with DeKalb College’s President’s Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award in 1990 from DeKalb College for his composition “Sonata No. 3, Op. 30 for Alto/Soprano Saxophone & Piano” and frequently receives ASCAP Plus awards. Since his retirement from college teaching in 2004, the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra premiered his “War Chant, Op. 32” in Decatur, GA (June 2009), and The Globe Saxophone Quartet premiered his “Quartet for Saxophones, Op. 37” at the World Saxophone Congress XVI in St. Andrews, Scotland (July 2012).  The U.S premiere of the Quartet was given by the “10th Floor Project” at Georgia State University at the National Association of Composers-USA Conference in November 2014. The DeKalb Symphony Orchestra premiered his “Berceuse & Tango for oboe, alto saxophone & orchestra, Op. 38” on April 28, 2015.

Dr. Anderson is a Professor Emeritus of Music from Georgia State University’s Perimeter College (formerly DeKalb College and Georgia Perimeter College) in Clarkston, Ga, where he taught piano, composition and music theory. He was also the Chairman of the Department of Fine Arts at GPC from 1996-2002.  The Shenandoah University Alumni Association awarded Dr. Anderson the 2016 Distinguished Alumnus Award-Lifetime Achievement.

After coming to Georgia in 1976, Dr. Anderson has been an active member of many music organizations, including the Georgia Music Teachers Association. He served as the GMTA president from 1986 to 1988, vice president for program 1979-82, and he served as the chairman of the GMTA Student Composition Contest and the GMTA/MTNA Commissioning Program from 1979 to 1999.  He held a similar position as composition chair for the Southern Division of MTNA, 1988-1990.

From 1979 to 1981, he was also the chairman of the piano division of the Georgia Music Educators Association. Other offices held have included vice president for programs for the Georgia Association of Music Theorists and a board member of the Atlanta Music Club Scholarship Committee and its Vice President in charge of concerts, 1986-88.

Currently, he is a member of The Recording Academy®, National Association of Composers-USA and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Many of Dr. Anderson’s compositions are published and receive numerous performances in the United States and Europe.

Dr. Anderson is the president of ACA Digital Recording, Inc. and is the producer of “The Atlanta Music Scene,” heard weekly over Atlanta’s WABE-FM 90.1. He also produces the “Spivey Soiree” (September-November) and is one of the recording engineers for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra broadcast recordings heard weekly (February-July) on Atlanta’s WABE-FM 90.1, statewide on Georgia Public Broadcasting and nationally on American Public Media’s “Performance Today” and “SymphonyCast.” As a recording engineer and producer, Dr. Anderson’s recording work has been favorably reviewed in Fanfare, American Record Guide, The Atlanta Audio Society Newsletter, Atlanta 30306 and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  He won the 1990 National Public Radio Lucien Wulsin Award for the Best National Performance-Small Ensemble for his recording of the King’s Singers at Atlanta’s Symphony Hall.  During the Atlanta Olympics, he was the recording engineer for “Performance Today’s” CD “Spirit of ‘96.” ACA Digital Recording now has more than  127 releases of classical chamber music, solo recitals, choral works and traditional jazz being distributed nationally by Albany Music Distributors with downloads distributed through The Orchard.  The most recent release he engineered was for the vocal ensemble Chanticleer “The Gypsy in My Soul” on Chanticleer Records from a live concert given at Spivey Hall in Georgia.

Jui-Wen Ginger Chen, born in Taipei, Taiwan, began the study of piano at the age of 5 and was selected to participate in the National Special Program for Musically Gifted Students in Taipei at the age of 9. She received her Doctor of Music degree in Piano Performance and Master of Music degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from Northwestern University. She received her Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from the University of South Carolina at Columbia. All degrees were earned with high distinction. She also received a Certificate of Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the Piano Institute at Saint-Petersburg Conservatory, Russia.

Dr. Chen studied piano with renowned artists Raymond Dudley, David Kaiserman, Elena Shishko, Jean Barr, Claude Frank, Richard Goode. and Menahem Pressler. She has performed extensively in Taiwan and the United States, toured as a soloist with the Columbia Philharmonic Orchestra of South Carolina and performed for broadcast on WNIB Radio in Chicago. She was a first violinist in the Columbia Philharmonic Orchestra and the South Carolina Chamber Orchestra.

She is a winner of many awards, including the Vemo-Ross-Orndorff International Music Award Competition in Chicago, the Grace Welsh Prize for Piano in Chicago, the Taipei Youth Piano Competition, the Taiwan Youth Chamber Music Competition and the Golden Lion Prize for Taiwan’s Most Distinguished Young Musicians.

Her doctoral thesis “20th Century Taiwanese Composers and Their Piano Works,” is cited in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Many of Dr. Chen’s students have performed in the Georgia Music Teachers Association’s Convention; Georgia Music Educators Association’s Convention, and the Music Teachers’ National Association’s National Convention. She has student winners of regional, national and international awards who have also been featured on National Public Broadcast Radio.

Dr. Chen was an instructor of piano and chamber music and choral/opera accompanist at Northwestern University and piano instructor at Columbia International University in Columbia, S.C. before her appointment at Georgia Perimeter College (now Perimeter College). As a Professor of Music at Georgia Perimeter College, she was the head of applied piano and keyboard theory studies from 1998 until she retired in 2015.