Leroy Anderson Biography

The world-famous creator of the Christmas standard Sleigh Ride, Leroy Anderson was the eclectic assimilator of many diverse styles. Far from being a frivolous pops musician, he was an outstandingly talented music student, studying at Harvard under George Enescu and Walter Piston among others. After working as a freelance organist and conductor in and around the Boston area, he left academia in 1936 to arrange for Arthur Fiedler's Boston Pops Orchestra, then in 1938 he started to compose his own works. Anderson was the first composer to sell over a million copies of a purely instrumental work with his Blue Tango (1953). The Syncopated Clock, written seven years earlier, had been his first golden disc and US charted hit (it reached No. 11 in 1951 for Andersons own Pops Concert Orchestra).