Current and recent projects:
KINDA GREEN, duo with Tim Perkis; GROSSE ABFAHRT with Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, John Shiurba and Matt Ingalls; MOCKRACY: co-operative orchestra, chorus, and maxed media;
sfSound Group, led by Matt Ingalls; Trio with Bhob Rainey and Jack Wright; ALL TOMORROW'S ZOMBIES, with Tim Perkis & Gino Robair; John Zorn’s COBRA, led by William Winant & Dave Slusser; John Shiurba’s 5x5; Moe! Staiano's Moe!kestra
Influences
William Eggleston, Alterations, Derek Bailey, Slim Harpo, Berio, Braxton, Cage, Feldman, William Carlos Williams, Walt Disney, Luc Ferrari, my mom, Toshinori Kondo, Lachenmann, Count Basie, Gyorgy Ligeti, Roscoe Mitchell, George Clinton, John Oswald, Scelsi, Schlippenbach Quartet, Leo Smith, Stockhausen, Andy Warhol, Charles M. Schulz, Lydia Lunch, Tenney, Anton Chekhov, Jack Wright, Xenakis, Webern, James Joyce, Schoenberg, Sun Ra, Spike Jones, John Dos Passos, Miles Davis, Ansel Adams, R. Crumb, Ornette Coleman, Paul Klee, Henri Cartier-Bresson, my dad, Flannery O' Connor, Ettore Bugatti, Lester Young, Lester Bowie, Lester Flatt, Richard Lester, Karl Berger, RAW Magazine, Pauline Oliveros, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alvin Curran, Ernest Hemingway, Ford Madox Ford, George Lewis, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Cecil Taylor, Jacques Attali, Roger Miller (the country one), Mitch Miller, Leon Fleischer, Henry Mancini, Frank Sinatra, George Herriman, Processed World Magazine, Victor Borge, Roz Chast, Mary Fleener, Stuart Davis, Fats Waller, Jean-Luc Godard, Dick Van Dyke, Spike Lee, Stan Lee, Lee Hazelwood, Woody Herman, Gil Evans, Luis Bunuel, Jelly Roll Morton, James Brown, Jabbo Smith, Mad Magazine, Carlton Gamer, Bill Coleman, Robert Musil, Rex Stewart, Otha Turner, Roy Eldridge, Norton Juster, Bunny Berigan, Forrest J. Ackerman, Louis Armstrong, Junichiro Tanizaki, Thad Jones, Olu Dara, Chet Baker, Bix Beiderbecke, Parnelli Jones, W. C. Fields, M. C. Escher, J. K. Randall, J. S. Bach, T. S. Eliot, Richard Misrach, Bill Watterson, John McPhee, Kaz, Dr. Seuss, Earl Hines, Orson Welles, Jimmy Yancey, Scott Joplin, Windsor McKay, Charlie Chaplin, Boyd Raeburn, Erroll Garner, Dizzy Gillespie, Edward Lear, Semiotext(e), Saul Steinberg, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Thomas Pynchon, Peter Bagge, William Faulkner, Joseph Beuys, Chris Ware, Jackson Pollock, Bill Cosby, Stan Freberg, my sisters, Charles Mingus, Allan Sherman, Captain Beefheart, Akira Kurosawa, André Popp, Lucien Bernhard, Virgil Exner, Owen Bradley, Willie Nelson, The Beatles, Clifford Brown, Synecdoche, Albert Ayler, John Lee Hooker, Don Cherry, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Jean Baudrillard, Henry Miller, Stanley Kubrick, Preston Sturges, Buster Keaton, Harpo Marx, Huey "Piano" Smith, Joe Meek, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Elias Canetti, Werner Herzog, Negativland, Tom Waits, Dinah Washington, Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs, The Pop Group, Public Image LTD, Luigi Russolo, Gunter Grass, Joseph Heller, Bo Diddley, I. Shibata Shihan
Sounds Like
"An acknowledged innovator in the use of extended split-tone techniques and multiphonics on trumpet, Djll comes across on stage as something of a trickster, a canny manipulator of sounds-you-never-expected-to-hear-on-a-trumpet, a magician who uses valves and breath rather than smoke and mirrors." - JazzCorner.com
Tom Djll studied music at Berklee School of Music, the Colorado College, the Creative Music Studio, and Mills College with Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Karl Berger, Lester Bowie, Leo Smith, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran, and many others. He is the recipient of a Masters degree from Mills College in Electronic Music as well as a Deeploma from the Deep Listening Organization, and was awarded the Paul Merritt Henry Prize for Composition while at Mills. Tom has led improvising workshops and in 2004 completed a monthlong residency at Mills College, focusing on extended techniques.
Tom has spent over twenty years developing the trumpet’s wide sonic array of extended techniques. His musical language incorporates complex noises and gritty, unheard textures from electronica into melodic gestures and building asymmetrical formal structures. Tom has made a lifelong study of the art of improvised music, and has been actively performing since 1980. He has performed with Gianni Gebbia, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Eugene Chadbourne, Natsuki Tamura, Fred Frith, The Splatter Trio, Gail Brand, matt ingalls, Wolfgang Fuchs, Pauline Oliveros, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, nmperign, Tim Perkis, William Winant, Toshi Makihara, Phillip Greenlief, Jack Wright, Miya Masaoka, Luc Houtkamp, Tatsuya Nakatani, and many others.
Tom's band Grosse Abfahrt has two releases, erstes Luftschiffe zu Kalifornien on Creative Sources, with Boris Baltschun and Serge Baghdassarians, and everything that disappears on EMANEM, with Lê Quan Ninh and Frédèric Blondy. Tom appears on recordings with Wolfgang Fuchs, Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, John Shiurba and Matthew Sperry (Six Fuchs, Rastascan), Miya Masaoka, Vijay Iyer and others on Rastascan’s Sun Ra tribute album Wavelength/Infinity, on Chris Brown’s LAVA (Tzadik) and Duets (Artifact), and on Jack Wright’s
thank you for your message, yes, lucky to came along your site -- I listened to all tracks -- and like both the accoustic and the more "electronic" side of your work -- thank you for putting this online here for us.
Played with Andrew Voigt who said he had been playing with you. You were my most dangerous collaborator, full of surprises. 1984 New Years Eve gig still haunts me. Joee
