Anthony Tan was a laureate of the 2008 International Composer Competition of the Hamburg Klangwerktage. Other awards include the Gold medal from the Royal Conservatory of Music and numerous grants from the Alberta Foundation of the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts. He has attended the Matrix 10 Experimental Studio Academy, the 2010 Acanthes IRCAM Computer Music Workshops, Domain Forget New Music Session, the National Arts Centre Composer's Program and the Academie Internationale de Composition du Blanc-Mesnil. His music has been presented at the International Computer Music Conference in 2009 (Montreal) and 2010 (New York). Tan has also had the unique opportunity to work at the Cantos Music Foundation in Calgary where he served as an interpreter of their musical instruments as well as spent summers creating audio and literary documentation of their collection.
Anthony is also involved with music for contemporary dance and has written for companies such as the Merce Cunningham School (New York), Tangente (Montreal), and Ephemeral Industry (Calgary) as well as music for a short film commissioned by Bravo!FACT and the EMPAC Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Dance Movies Commission.
Prior to his research as a composer, he studied genetics, mathematics, and eastern philosophy. He is currently pursuing his PhD in composition at McGill University in Montreal, Canada under the supervision of John Rea and Sean Ferguson and is a research assistant in the Expanded Musical Practice Axis at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and technology (CIRMMT).