The music of Leroy Anderson is firmly entrenched in American popular culture, even if most Americans are unfamiliar with his name. Anderson was a composer of distinctive and delightful miniatures. His best-known work is undoubtedly the jaunty Christmas perennial, Sleigh Ride, but almost equally well known are The Syncopated Clock,

The Typewriter, and Blue Tango.

The son of Swedish immigrants, Leroy Anderson was born on June 29th, 1908, in Cambridge, Massachusetts and grew up in a musical family. He earned his B.A. (magna cum laude) and M.A. in Music at Harvard, studying with composers Walter Piston and Georges Enesco. In the 30’s he was an organist, conductor and arranger in the Boston area. He also played double bass, trombone and tuba and became director of the Harvard Band in 1931. Anderson’s band arrangements caught the attention of the Boston Symphony’s manager who asked Leroy to arrange some Harvard songs for a special Pops concert. Arthur Fiedler, music director of the Pops, was impressed with Anderson’s work and encouraged him to write original compositions for the orchestra. The first of those pieces, Jazz Pizzicato, became an immediate hit when it was premiered in 1938.

World War II interrupted Anderson’s work as a composer.  In 1942 he entered the U.S. Army as a private and served as a translator and interpreter in Iceland. Later, while living in Washington and working at the Pentagon as Chief of the Scandinavian Desk of Military Intelligence, he wrote The Syncopated Clock.  He conducted its premiere at the Boston Pops on “Harvard Night”. At the end of the war, Captain Anderson resumed life as a civilian and as a fulltime composer.

In 1946 Leroy Anderson became an orchestrator and arranger for Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. Anderson provided them with a stream of original pieces, “concert music with a pop quality”, as Anderson described his work. Fiedler continued to premiere his works, such as Sleigh Ride, Fiddle-Faddle, Serenata, Irish Suite and Trumpeter’s Lullaby. In 1950 Anderson signed with Decca Records. Though it was in recording studios with Leroy conducting that his music was then first performed, the music was also recorded by Fiedler and the Pops with great success and by many other orchestras.

Leroy Anderson’s pieces continue to be some of the most frequently performed in the repertoire of professional symphonic pops orchestras all across the country – over 1,700 performances each year. School bands and music students all over the world know, admire and play Leroy Anderson’s music. Although he wrote his music originally for symphonic orchestra, Leroy Anderson’s compositions transcend musical boundaries. According to one critic, “Sleigh Ride almost certainly holds the distinction of having been recorded by a broader aesthetic range of performers than any other piece in the history of Western music.” 

 John Williams, composer and Conductor Laureate of the Boston Pops, has said, “Though we have performed his works countless times over the years at the Boston Pops, his music remains forever as young and fresh as the very day on which it was composed.”