PC - Haley Freedlund
About Tom
Composer/Guitarist/Improviser/Electronicist/Educator
Tom Baker is a composer, guitarist, improviser, and electronic musician who has been active in the Seattle new-music scene since arriving in 1994. He is the artistic director of the Seattle Composers’ Salon, co-founder of the Seattle EXperimental Opera (SEXO), and founder of the new-music recording label Present Sounds Recordings.
“...the acoustical rendition of a Jackson Pollack painting.”
— Twenty-First Century Music
Tom’s compositions have been performed throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. He writes chamber music, opera, and electronic music, as well as music for percussion, chamber orchestra, dance, film, and chorus. His work traverses themes of grief, loss, redemption, and perseverance, through a combination of sound exploration, electronic improvisation, and musical form and structure. He has been in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Montalvo Arts Center, and his music is published by Frog Peak Music.
“…a delicate, eccentric compositional sense and a tendency
toward unruly improvisation.”
— Time Out New York
Tom is also a scholar and educator and has recently presented work to the Society for Minimalist Music in Wales UK, and to the International Conference on the Arts in Society in Vancouver BC. He is a Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts where he teaches composition, music theory, and electronic music. His most recent article was published in Perspectives of New Music in July, 2020.
“Alarmingly restrained, yet evocative,created with great care
and structured structurelessness. The space is the music.”
— ADD Reviews
Tom is active as a performer and improviser, specializing in fretless guitar and live-electronics. His band TRIPTET recently released its fourth album, Slowly, Away, on Engine Records. His electronic-interactive-arts collaboration with visual artist Robert Campbell called Manifold2 was was featured in the MoxSonic festival in 2019 and excerpts from their new opera-in-progress called The Language of Change were featured in the Current’s New Media festival in 2020.
“Tom Baker’s music plies the shadowy territory between
form, isolation, and silence.”
— The Stranger
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