Carl Anderson

Double bassist Carl Anderson joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the start of the 2019-2020 season. A versatile performer, he is equally comfortable in the orchestra, in chamber music ensembles, and as a soloist. Orchestral appearances have included performances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Alan Gilbert as a Zarin Mehta Global Academy Fellow; and with the New World Symphony in Miami directed by Michael Tilson Thomas.

Other notable engagements have included opera performances at the Spoleto Festival USA and Shostakovich’s symphonies no. 1 and 15 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In summer 2018, Anderson was a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow and received the 2018 Maurice Schwartz Award. At Tanglewood he collaborated with Leon Fleisher and the 2018 New Fromm Players quartet at Tanglewood in celebration of Fleisher’s 90th birthday; together they performed Mozart’s “a quattro” arrangement of his Concerto for Piano No. 12.

Anderson has also attended the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA, and the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. During his undergraduate studies, he spent two seasons as a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. As a chamber musician, Anderson participated in the Perlman Music Program, a chamber orchestra and training program on Shelter Island, NY, founded and conducted by Itzhak Perlman. He also participated in the 2015 New York String Seminar. As an orchestral soloist, Anderson won the Cincinnati Youth Symphony Orchestra concerto competition in 2013 and performed Giovanni Bottesini’s Concerto for Double bass and Orchestra No. 2. The following year he won the DePaul University Concerto Competition, performing Bottesini’s Allegro di Concerto “Alla Mendelssohn.” Anderson first studied bass with his father, Wayne Anderson, who was a bassist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He received his undergraduate degree at DePaul University, where he studied with Alexander Hanna, principal bassist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He went on to earn his master’s degree at Rice University Shepherd School of Music, studying with Paul Ellison, renowned pedagogue and former principal bassist of the Houston Symphony Orchestra.