Legend has it that Gary Anderson was born with a 24k gold plated Otto Link in his mouth. This is totally inaccurate as it was a Meyer 7M sax mouthpiece. However, it is true that pen was not pressed to manuscript until age 5 when Gary felt stock arrangements in his K-1 dance band were not challenging enough. A native of Southern California, Gary Anderson graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Berklee College of Music in Boston where he began his professional music life as a full-time professor as well as a member of the world-renowned Berklee Saxophone Quartet which included mentors, Joe Viola and John LaPorta. What should have been a short trip from Boston to New York ended up taking 5 years and totaled 286,321 miles as featured arranger and music director for Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd – a journey culminating at Carnegie Hall (oh, that’s how you get there!) for Woody’s 40th Anniversary Celebration. Although Gary’s career in New York has included creating music for 100’s of TV, Film and Broadway Productions, collaborating with luminaries ranging from Marvin Hamlish to Elmo, according to his teenaged daughter, if trapped on an island and forced to choose one piece of Gary's music with which to live forever, it would have to be the "Itchy & Scratchy" theme from The Simpsons!! Recent awards include a GRAMMY for the soundtrack to "Elmopalooza" (Sesame Street’s 30thAnniversary) and being honored as one of Berklee College’s 50 outstanding alumni – along with fellow musical minds Alf Clawson, Quincy Jones and Abraham Laboriel.

Gary Anderson: Saxophone/ Co-Producer