Pianist Lee Jordan-Anders livens muric

At the Nov. 5 performance of “Music as Autobiography,” Hofheimer Theater was filled with Virginia Wesleyan students, faculty, staff and music lovers from throughout the community.

From the darkness, a swell of applause thundered as a spotlight found pianist Lee Jordan-Anders and followed her to the Steinway grand piano.

A hush fell.

Into it, there suddenly poured not a composition by Beethoven, Debussy or Schumann, as the program promised, but the bold, jazzy notes of a George Gershwin Broadway show hit from the 1930s.

“This program is to be about ‘I,’” Jordan-Anders explained to her happily surprised audience. “How better to begin it than with a piece of music having ‘I’ in the title – ‘I’ve Got Rhythm.’”

The audience then got to decipher the “I” in the works that followed. Beethoven’s sonata poured out as a moving tribute to his friend and patron, the Archduke Rudolph. Debussy’s love for a small daughter sang tenderly through pieces from the “Children’s Corner Suite.” Robert Schumann’s genius, touched by mental illness, erupted from pieces that musically mirrored warring personalities, one tempestuous, the other a dreamer.

To each composer’s musical self-portrait, Jordan-Anders brought polished, passionate artistry, both at the piano and in her revelations about the composers’ lives.

“Art and music add a beautiful richness to our lives and, at the same time, contribute to a deeper understanding of what it means to be human,” said Jordan-Anders in the introduction to her Internet-published book, “Picture This! A Gallery of Musical Canvases Framed by Fine Artworks from the Chrysler Museum of Art.”

Her words might be considered an autobiographical theme around which she has composed a life of teaching, performance, writing and scholarly research.

Jordan-Anders, artist-in-residence, professor of music, and chair of the Humanities division at Virginia Wesleyan, studied piano from age seven. She earned a bachelor and master of music degrees from Northwestern University’s School of Music, and lived in Madrid, Spain for six years while performing as a soloist and in chamber ensembles.

In 1986, she joined the Wesleyan faculty where she teaches courses in aesthetics, listening, music theory, chamber music and applied piano. Her talent recognized in childhood, Jordan-Anders made a decision that would affect the course of her life.

“As a senior in high school, I decided to go to a college that was not a conservatory,” she said of Northwestern. “I was required to take courses other than music.

“Early on, I recognized that my interests were broader than just music. It was one of the reasons I married an architect.”

Married to Glen Anders for 34 years, Wesleyan’s artist-in-residence remembers a long-ago performance.

“Glen arranged for me to play the piano at an opening of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta,” she said. “I played surrounded by great paintings. It was there I became aware of the potential for a relationship between art and music.”

The experience became the basis for variations on a theme on which Jordan-Anders has published articles, performed in concerts and given lectures throughout the United States. It has also inspired her creation of a unique role at Virginia Wesleyan.

“I have tried to approach my work here in ways that connect to the liberal arts,” she said. “I love creating in every way possible. It is essential food for my soul. Just look at my door!”

The walls of Jordan-Anders’ office are bright with paintings, sketches, photographs, music programs and mementos of a life lived abundantly in the arts. In a room where passionate touches of red predominate, there is a dog’s bowl on the floor, also red.

“My husband and I have a sweetheart, Murphy, a cocker spaniel,” she said. “Murphy sings when I practice.”

A beloved pet is only one among a chorus who sing the praises of Jordan-Anders.

Art historian Leslie Griffin Hennessey, Ph.D. is an adjunct assistant professor of art at Virginia Wesleyan and an internationally recognized scholar on the interaction of art, music and society in the 18th century. Asked for her impressions, she said, “Lee Jordan-Anders has a magical ability to bridge the beauties of the visual and performing arts. She is a gifted pianist with an obvious love of communicating.”

“Professor Jordan-Anders is a very patient, caring teacher,” added Wesleyan junior Laura Dudley, a student taking an intermediate musicianship course. “She helps us reach new levels and we are all the more successful because of it.”

Of her debut in 1998 as piano soloist with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C Major, she says with a smile, “It looks good on a resume.”

“When I came back from Spain,” she recalled, “I was asked wouldn’t I like to play in Carnegie Hall? I said, ‘Hofheimer Theater is just fine. I’ll play for people I care about. The music sounds just as good here and I’ll enjoy it just as much.’

“To me it is as important to touch one person as to touch 3,000. Those added numbers are just zeroes.”