Get to know Peter Anderson, President & Founder

• Favorite instrument to play: Tuba

• Favorite instrument to listen to: Any double-reed instrument, like an English horn or oboe – such personality.

• Lesser-known listening recommendation: Brynn Terfel, a Welsh born baritone opera singer and genuine nice guy who I’ve had the honor of performing with several times (Listen to his rendition of Kyrie eleison, which he sang at the coronation of King Charles III.)

• Peter’s crank-the-volume go-to: Anything by Bob Marley

Peter Anderson likes to say he was a music major who needed a day job. Yet he was a more accomplished musician than that statement might suggest. 

Like many musicians, Peter fell in love with music quite young — at age four — and his passion became brass instruments and singing. As his voice started changing in high school, he started to focus more on singing, performing in all the various music festivals in High School; Regional district festivals for 4 years, All-State Festival – 4 years, All-Eastern – 1 year and All-New England Festivals, – 4 years.

While Peter admits that his younger self “thought he was a pretty big deal,” this perception was only reinforced by a scholarship offer from Dr. Ivan H. Trusler, Jr., director of choral activities, in the College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University in Ohio; later graduating from the University of New Hampshire’s Music Program and the School of Business.

It turns out that the college experience majoring in Music wasn’t the total fit he expected. As Peter explains, there were simply too many people walking through the music building hallways with scarves wrapped around their necks, singing solfege terrified of getting a cold and risking their voice. But he kept singing, and in 1981, Peter auditioned and won a position in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Festival Chorus. These annual auditions continued for 25 more years, and Peter remained a member of the chorus until he moved to Florida, eager to escape the winter doldrums in 2006, after his final performance of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123, at Symphony Hall under the baton of James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The change was a tough adjustment initially. After all, Peter had enjoyed performing on the world stage while traveling with an organization as prestigious as the Boston Symphony. As he also points out, making a living in music probably wouldn’t match his own financial expectations. The search started with options more obviously related to the music industry, including teaching and writing. And then the insurance light bulb lit.

Peter believed the insurance industry had long overlooked or undervalued musicians or simply didn’t understand or appreciate the financial and emotional connections that musicians have to their instruments and equipment. After exploring this niche further and defining the obvious gaps, Peter decided to launch Anderson Musical Instrument Insurance Solutions. It was the perfect marriage of music and business.

Building from his experience, knowledge of instruments and understanding of musicians’s needs, Peter set out to custom craft policies that could be tailored for any scenario and each individual or musical organization. Fittingly enough, the agency’s very first musical instrument account was the Boston Symphony in 1991.

In all the years since, Peter still personally vets each insurance carrier the agency uses, and he has amassed a personal trove of remarkable claim stories: forklifts piercing instrument cases, stolen accessories, damaged one-of-a-kind collectibles once owned by musical royalty. His agency remains the best way Peter knows to continue serving the music industry he loves and musicians who are just like him. As he says, he exists to protect their passion.