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Tom McClung

TOM McCLUNG BIOGRAPHY Tom McClung was born in 1957 in New York into a family for which the joy of making music was important everyday. His mother's ukulele and singing and his father's piano played the popular songs of Tin-Pan Alley and Broadway musicals. Even before he started lessons, Tom was exploring the sonorities and mysteries of their old upright piano, picking out tunes by ear and making up his own melodies. His family then moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, and at the age of six, Tom started formal lessons which introduced him to the world of Bach, Bartok, sharps, flats and rests. By the time he was in high school, he was giving classical piano recitals, playing Scott Joplin rags, composing and playing in the jazz workshop, singing in the chorale, playing recorder in the Collegium Musicum (Renaissance music), playing trumpet and baritone horn in the concert band, and playing rock'n'roll for school dances. He continued his music studies at Marlboro College with professors Blanche Honegger Moyse and Nigel Coxe, and then at the University of Massachusetts with Max Roach and Archie Shepp. At this time, he started playing professionally, for weddings, bar mitzvahs, piano bars, and with salsa, blues, swing and Dixieland bands. Living in Northampton, Massachusetts in the eighties and nineties, Tom studied music and composed and played throughout greater New England. Workshops and jam sessions gave him opportunities to play with great musicians such as Ray Copeland, Attila Zollar and George Mraz. He had lessons with pianists Larry Willis, Hugh Lawson, Mal Waldron and Billy Taylor. With the Paradise City Jazz Band, for which Tom contributed many arrangements, he played in festivals throughout the United States and tours in France, the UK and Australia. In 1991 Tom recorded his first disc “Locolypso”, leading a quintet playing his original compositions. His horizons continuing to grow both musically and geographically, Tom played for concerts and recordings with saxophonists Marion Brown, Yusef Lateef, and Archie Shepp, and in 1996 released a trio CD “The Telling” featuring drummer Steve McCraven and bassist Nat Reeves. After several European tours, Tom decided in 1998 to make Paris, France, his home. He continues to work around the world with the quartet of Archie Shepp, whose recent CD “Gemini” features two McClung originals and a guest appearance by Chuck D (Public Enemy). In 2006, his arrangements and piano playing on her disc “A Fraction of You” helped young Swedish singer Fredrika Stahl win a multi- record contract with Sony/BMG.

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