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Tom Teasley

TOM TEASLEY

Almost from the outset, Tom Teasley has brought percussion up from the background, profoundly demonstrating its strength in solo performance. He is "a percussionist in the widest and most exuberant sense" says the Washington Post,which also refers to him, for his contributions to recent Constellation Theatre productions, as a "multi-instrumental genius" and "musical wizard". He's a "creative bonanza," claims Bruce Wittet in Modern Drummer Magazine; "... give Tom a bass drum, a snare drum and a djembé and he'll give you part Stravinsky, part Art Blakey."

Teasley is a multi-dimensional performer and composer, crossing J boundaries of solo performance through the use of instruments from the world over, and cross-pollinating techniques from diverse traditions, and combining ancient percussion with digital technology.

As a Cultural Envoy, Teasley has traveled throughout the Middle East on behalf of the US State Department, giving historic performances in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, and Iraq in collaboration with indigenous musicians as well as in solo concerts and educational programs. He also shares his engaging experiences and global travels as musical and cultural ambassador in his keynote speaking engagements. He is the recipient of three Fulbright-Hayes Awards. He has also toured extensively, performing at world music and percussion festivals across the US, Europe, South America, New Zealand and Samoa.

Taking his music beyond the concert arena, Teasley has also performed with individual visual artists, such as performance artist Nick Cave, and with art galleries, including Washington, DC's Kreeger Museum of Art, the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia, and the Philadelphia Textile Museum. Tom is currently preparing for multi-media presentations/exhibits combining his original music with abstract video art inspired by Dadaist artists Hans Richter and others. He's equally renowned as a theatrical composer, sound designer and performer, and his work has earned him two Helen Hayes Awards and a third nomination for outstanding sound design for productions at several Washington, DC, theaters, including the Constellation Theatre and the Folger Theatre. He is the recipient 2012, 2013 and 2014 of The Washington Area Music Award (WAMA) for "Best World Music Instrumentalist. In addition, he has performed with the National Symphony as both a composer and a soloist, and has been an artist-in-residence at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and at the Levine School of Music. A new direction for his work has taken his music into the direction of "sound healing" with his work and touring with "Red Well Theatre Group". This innovative troupe of distinguished psychotherapists presents staged readings of plays about human challenges at psychotherapy conventions worldwide. Tom is also recording music/sound design for a series of guided meditations for Greenleaf Integrative Strategies to be used by returning military, USAID and St Department from deployment. Teasley’s seven earlier CDs have received international airplay and critical acclaim. He has been the subject of feature articles in “Modern Drummer” and “Drum!” magazines. Recent reviews for of his recordings are equally positive. All aboutjazz.com noted, "Tom is a true ambassador of percussive truth and togetherness,” and the @Critical Jazz blog raved, “Teasley's percussive genius knows no real bounds…”

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2
Album Review

Kristin Callahan: Lost in a Dream

Read "Lost in a Dream" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


The body of compositions known as “jazz standards" has proved to be as durable as it is long lived. These musical pieces, partially provided by the “Great American Songbook" and partially by composing jazz practitioners, have afforded artists a veritable bottomless pit of material with which to apply their own unique vision. One-hundred-plus years of recording history have resulted in a great many standard interpretations. So now it is difficult, if not aesthetically dangerous, for newer artists to delve into ...

2
Album Review

Tom Teasley: All The World's A Stage

Read "All The World's A Stage" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


Percussion is often treated as rhythmic garnish but, in the right hands, it can be the meal itself. Light spices, meaty grooves and flavorful accents can provide more than enough sustenance for the ear if they're blended in the right proportions and percussionist Tom Teasley proves that this hypothesis holds water on this, his eighth recording. All The World's A Stage is an overdubbed discourse on the art of tearing down cultural boundaries in the world of ...

148
Album Review

Tom Teasley: Global Standard Time

Read "Global Standard Time" reviewed by Ed Kopp


Percussionist/drummer Tom Teasley delivers earthy interpretations of well-known jazz standards on Global Standard Time, a release that's loose, soulful, exotic, and somewhat remindful of Leon Parker's approach to jazz. Like Parker, Teasley is a gifted percussionist whose worldly vision breathes new life into familiar songs.A musician and educator from the Washington, D.C., area whose last project was a stage collaboration with poet-actor Charles Williams, Teasley employs a variety of percussion instruments from around the world on this eclectic ...

113
Album Review

Tom Teasley: Global Standard Time

Read "Global Standard Time" reviewed by Douglas Payne


Global Standard Time evidences an exuberant musical scenarist in Washington, DC-area percussionist Tom Teasley. For his fourth disc (following last year's 'word beat' collaboration with poet-actor Charles Williams), the percussionist makes a case for himself as a highly imaginative conceptualist. He's anything but a busy noise-maker anxious to play with all his toys. Rather, Teasley is a colorful, intellectual and surprisingly spare musician, employing his talents in the orchestration of sound.Here, he covers ten rather ...

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Recording

Tom Teasley Continues To Expand Musical Boundaries On "All The World's A Stage"

Tom Teasley Continues To Expand Musical Boundaries On "All The World's A Stage"

Source: Cary Goldberg

New CD, the Eighth from Acclaimed Percussionist, Will be Released on July 10 All the World's a Stage is more than merely the title of multi- instrumentalist Tom Teasley's eighth CD - it's an apt metaphor to describe the career of this prolific composer/percussionist/musical ambassador. With the July 10 release of this new CD, on which Teasley plays a dozen different instruments on a collection of nine original tracks, he once again taps the multi-cultural collage of influences that have ...

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Interview

Tom Teasley's Expanded Global Viewpoints

Tom Teasley's Expanded Global Viewpoints

Source: The Independent Ear by Willard Jenkins

When the DC-area based multi-instrumental wizard and all around percussion renaissance man Tom Teasley asked me to write liner notes for his latest global percussion release All The World’s A Stage it got me wondering about the evolution of one who self-identifies as a jazz percussionist, yet has so successfully broadened his base to include theater, teaching across far reaches of the planet, and seemingly all manner of expressions in the percussion universe. I mean, what kind of brain exercises ...

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Performance / Tour

Tom Teasley in Performance: World Wind and Percussion on December 18 in Alexandria, VA

Tom Teasley in Performance: World Wind and Percussion on December 18 in Alexandria, VA

Source: All About Jazz

The Washington Post calls local drummer Tom Teasley “a composer and a percussionist in the widest and most exuberant sense of the word." This December, listeners can enjoy Tom's music and join in helping the less fortunate in our community. Tom and his new trio present World Wind and Percussion, 3:00 pm Sunday, December 18, at Mount Vernon Unitarian Church, 1909 Windmill Lane in Alexandria, Virginia. It is the second in the BioRhythms series to benefit the Bryant Early Learning ...

“Multi-Instrumental genius, Tom Teasley has recorded the score… hauntingly beautiful melodies”- Ribecca Ritzel – The Washington Post

“Musical Wizard, TomTeasley…” - Celia Wren – The Washington Post

Brilliant. That’s the short of it. Tom Teasley’s “All The World’s A Stage” is such a uniquely and expertly crafted set of percussive movements that calling it anything else simply wouldn’t be accurate- Colin McGuire. - Frederick News-Post

"This areas most original one-man-band" —The Washington Times

Fusions between American and Eastern schools are old news, yet seldom has any percussionist drawn so deply from both wells and come up with a blend as bewitching and original as this. J. Poet- DRUM! Magazine

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