Terry Pender is a composer and musician whose interests range from contemporary multimedia-based works to jazz mandolin. His music has been performed in countries around the world, including Japan, China, Portugal, Italy, Canada, and Greece, as well as across the United States. He holds a doctorate in composition from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, and he served as Associate Director of the Computer Music Center at Columbia University from 1995 to 2018. He also served as editor for Mandolin Quarterly, an internationally distributed journal, and his music is published by NL Publications, Inc.
Background and Aspirations in Composition
My musical life began when I was in my early teens. I discovered that I had a passion for traditional American music and for the sound and complexities of the acoustic guitar and mandolin. After graduating from college, I found myself in New York City, living the life of a professional musician in the downtown music scene. Even then, my musical tastes were eclectic. One of my bands was more rock oriented and appeared regularly at CBGB’s. Another was purely acoustic and experimental, utilizing poly-rhythms, improvisation, and world music influences and appearing on concerts with Philip Glass and other avant-garde musicians of the 1980s. I was commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art to write a piece based on Jackson Pollock’s painting Number 27. I also composed music for National Public Radio and for use on several daytime dramas, including The Guiding Light, The Search for Tomorrow, and As the World Turns.
In the late 1980s, I decided to go back to school to get a more formal education in music. After finishing my doctorate in composition in 1995, I returned to New York and began experimenting with electronic and computer music. For several years, I collaborated with Paul Kaiser and the members of the OpenEnded Group. Our work resulted in several major digital public art pieces, some of which have been exhibited in a number of the world’s greatest venues, including Lincoln Center, the Exploratorium, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, the Sundance Film Festival, and the Boston Institute for Contemporary Art. I was also a member of PGT (Pender, Garton, Taylor), an innovative trio consisting of mandolin and two laptop computers, and we performed live in concerts around the world.
Currently, I’ve been focusing on jazz and swing mandolin, and I play with Chelsea Strings, a New York City-based jazz trio of mandolin, guitar, and bass. While I’m digging more deeply into the traditional jazz idiom, I’m still drawn to the eclectic, and that’s what inspired me to create East of Chelsea — a project that reflects my ongoing fascination with music of all styles and genres.