Peter and Will Anderson - Songbook Summit (2023)

“Virtuosos on clarinet and saxophone” (New York Times), identical twins Peter and Will Anderson are two of the most extraordinary jazz woodwind players today. Born and raised in Washington D.C., the Andersons moved to New York City to attend The Juilliard School. They’ve performed with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Wycliffe Gordon, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Paquito D’Rivera, Wynton Marsalis, and can be heard on the 2014 Grammy-winning soundtrack of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire with Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks. They’ve headlined at Carnegie Hall, The Blue Note, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, New Orleans Jazz Festival, Feinstein’s 54 Below, Blues Alley, Birdland, and live on Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion Radio Program. The Andersons have performed in over 40 U.S. states, throughout Brazil, Japan, the U.K., and six times in NYC’s famed Highlights in Jazz series, alongside Lou Donaldson, Jimmy and Tootie Heath, Ken Peplowski, Steve Turre, Warren Vache, Frank Vignola, and Jimmy Cobb.

Vanity Fair magazine listed their debut album, Correspondence, featuring Kenny Barron, alongside Miles Davis in “Four New Releases to Make You Love Jazz,” and the Washington Post called their music “imaginatively unfolding in ways that consistently bring a fresh perspective to classic jazz.” Peter and Will received a 2014 Drama Desk nomination for their Off-Broadway Production, Le Jazz Hot (one of seven sold-out productions at 59E59 Theaters), and in 2018 were Bistro Award winners. Their 2014 album, Deja Vu, was called “a burner that reveals the band’s cohesiveness and spirit” (JazzTimes). Last year, the Andersons raised $25,000 to establish the Joe Temperley Juilliard Student Scholarship Fund and tribute album in honor of their late great saxophone mentor. Peter and Will are teaching artists through Juilliard’s Nord-Anglia program, conducting school workshops in Orlando, Charlotte, Washington D.C. and Chicago. They’ve lectured at over 100 high schools countrywide and Universities including Michigan State, Ohio State, Florida State, Temple, Xavier, Scranton, South Florida, Lenoir-Rhyne, Central Oklahoma, Jacksonville, William Paterson and in Nagasaki, Japan.

Peter and Will can be heard and seen in the major motion pictures Revolutionary Road, Killers of the Flower Moon, Boardwalk Empire, and The Marvelous Ms. Maisel. They performed with the Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars in After Midnight, which ran on Broadway from 2013-2014, and featured Vanessa Williams, KD Lang, Fantasia Barrino, and Patti Labelle. In 2017, the Andersons directed “The Fabulous Dorsey Brothers” in J@LC’s Appel Room, narrated by The Wire and Treme actor, Clarke Peters. Also that year, they completed a 30-day National tour sponsored by Allied Concert Services, on a roster of artists including The Boston Brass and Ann Hampton Callaway.