Background
Anderson, Ruth was born on March 21, 1928 in Kalispell, Montana, United States. Daughter of Emil Arthur and Louie Mae (Bienz) Anderson.
Anderson, Ruth was born on March 21, 1928 in Kalispell, Montana, United States. Daughter of Emil Arthur and Louie Mae (Bienz) Anderson.
Bachelor, Master of Arts, U. Washington, 1949, 51; student, Fontainebleau, France, 1958; student, Princeton University, 1962-1963; student, Columbia University, 1966, 69; studies with, Darius Milhaud, Nadia Boulanger, Jean Pierre Rampal, John Wummer.
1949 — Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, University of Washington
1951 — Master of Arts, University of Washington
1962-1963 — Princeton University Graduate School (first woman admitted)
1965, 1966, 1969 — Columbia University Electronic Music Studio
1967 — New York University Computer Synthesis of Music
Retired from Hunter College in 1989, she lives in New York during the winter and in Montana during the summer. She is a, "respected electronic composer," whose works have been released on the Opus One label and Charles Amirkhanian"s "pioneering" LP anthology New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media (1977). Her sound poem I Come Out of Your Sleep (revised and recorded on Sinopah 1997 XI) is constructed from speech sounds in Louise Bogan"s poem "Little Lobelia." According to the composer "a very soft dynamic level is an integral component of this piece.
lieutenant is important to listen to it in the way it was composed, near the threshold of hearing." (liner notes) Her collage piece SUM (State of the Union Message) is included on the Lesbian American Composers collection (1998 Cryptography Research Inc: 780).
SUM and DUMP (1970), also a sonic collage, are her best known pieces. Anderson received degrees in flute and composition at the University of Washington and later studied with Darius Milhaud and Nadia Boulanger in the 1950s and with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Pril Smiley in the 1960s at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
She wrote that after her exposure to tape manipulation she became open to the potential of, "all sounds..as material for music". She joined the staff at Hunter College (City University of New York) in 1966 and created the electroacoustic music center there after being fired and rehired at the new Hunter College facilities in 1968.
Director, founder Hunter College Electronic Music Studio, New York City, 1968-1979. Member American Composers' Alliance, Broadcast Music Inc., MacDowell Colony, Yaddo Corporation.
Married Annea F. Lockwood, July 10, 1973.