"Thollem dives headlong into fascinating unforeseen and bold musical adventures that make him one of the most interesting pianists of the current improvised music genre...the result is the natural consequence of being intrinsically eclectic at heart. His inventiveness is facilitated by his highly developed virtuosity".
- Eduardo Chagas, Tomajazz
"Thollem Mcdonas does what few can: He combines extreme imagination with terrific postclassical chops and an ability to communicate through melody."
- Greg Burk, Los Angeles Weekly
"McDonas is a pianist with highly developed technical skills at the piano. His flourishes and runs up and down the keyboard are executed with crystal clarity."
- Winthrop Bedford, Jazz Improv Magazine
"Thollem has that rare gift of soulful equilibrium, which he alternates with digital dexterities that have few equals on the current scene. My favourite moments doing my reviewer's job are like this, the very instant when you come across a genius and are among the first ones to realize and tell the world."
- Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
"McDonas' piano are Defalla (driving rhythms and Iberian modes), Schoenberg (unresolved dissonances a mile high), the collapsing/expanding tempi of Nancarrow, and splatterings of Cecil Taylor..."
- Tom Djll, Signal To Noise
"With each piece McDonas creates a universe of its own...very original... a fresh voice".
- Dolf Mulder, VitalWeekly
"McDonas welds elements of jazz, blues and classical music into a mighty tower of song, then shatters his construct with the breathless bull-rush of a mystic improviser."
- The St. Louis River Front Times
"Kicking off a four-gig residency at CAID last week, he left listeners gasping and grasping for reference points: Percussive! Lyrical! Debussy! Cecil Taylor! Don Pullen! Conlon Nancarrow's manic piano rolls! All sorta apt, none quite right — he must be an original."
- Megan O'Neil, Detroit Metro Times
"Unclassifiable and extraordinarily equipped, a travel through disparate musics. Thollem McDonas redefines the concept of performance in solo pianoforte".
- 2 live solo concerts intertwined - CreativeSources
Somuchheaven Somuchhell
- Live Solo Concert in Nantes, France - Saravah
Bloom Project - Prismatic Season
- Edgetone Records
Intuition, Science and Sex
- Duo with Arrington deDionyso - Edgetone Records
Box Deserter - Two Revolutions
- Edgetone Records
Bloom Project - Bloom
- Edgetone Records
Sono Contento di Stare Qua - Duo with Eduardo Ricci
- Edgetone Records
Thollem/Rivera - Everything'sGoingEverywhere
- EdgetoneRecords
Thollem/Rivera - I'llMeet You HalfwayOutInTheMiddleOfEverywhere
-EdgetoneRecords
PoorStopKillingPoor
- Live Solo Concert in Detroit - Edgetone Records
NuclearBomb CavePainting
- Pax Records
LABELS:
EdgetoneRecords
ESP-disk
CreativeSources
Saravah
Pax Records
Amirani Records
Dromos Records
TOURS OF 2007:
6 concert residency in Portland, Oregon (December)
15 week 65 concert tour around the states and Canada (Autumn, 2007).
7 Week tour in Ireland, France, Switzerland (January through March).
RECENT FESTIVALS:
Trasporti Marittimi (Livernon, France)
Tagofest (Massa, Italy) Strade Blu Festival (Ravenna, Italy)
Olympia Festival of Experimental Musics (Olympia, Washington)
Terra Trema (Cherbourg, France)
Bohemian National Home Festival of Jazz and Improvised Musics (Detroit, Michigan) Edgetone Summit (San Francisco, California)
Big Sur Experimental Music Festival at the Henry Miller Library (Big Sur, California)
TROK (Milan, Italy)
CONFLUENCE MUSIC
is a term I invented to describe my music, because I knew of no other term in existence that was appropriate otherwise. My music has no particular roots nor is it a rebellion against any music or musical philosophy. I am interested primarily in the places where different cultures meet, and variety is very important to me. I approach each performance as a unique event sometimes with much silence or none at all, completely improvised or completely composed, solo piano, or with an ensemble, and/or many combinations in between.
At any given point in a performance I may move from something resembling Latin Jazz, to Free Jazz, to something resembling East European or Arabic Folk Tunes, to Minimalism, to a Punck waltz, to Polyphonic Serialism, to Bi-Tonal Blues. I say 'something resembling' because I am not copying, or trying to emulate these styles, but incorporating many of my own, as well as others ideas and approaches and attitudes, and weaving them together in new and unique ways.
It's my intention to make music that stimulates the mind and the body, that's intellectual and sexy and meditative and ferocious and poetic and athletic and revolutionary and spiritual and political and humorous and loving and that will shake people awake, starting with me first.
In a solo performance I primarily play comprovisations (free improvisation, compositions, and improvisations based on pre-composed material). Each performance can be approached in a variety of ways; a free improvisation can be completely spontaneous with the intention of not relying at all on anything preconceived; or several improvisations from a single seed that is preconceived or not; or a composition played note for note and a second section improvised from material or concept of the composed piece; or a full performance with or without pause that foreshadows and afterglows composed material through quotes that is fully realized earlier or later in the performance respectively; or tiny improvisations/compositions with space between each, moving from one type of musical material to the next which may or not be radically different from what was just heard.
There are, of course, many more possibilities, but the most important criteria for me is that I approach each performance as a unique event. I have many hours of potential
material at my fingertips/synapses. One performance may include snippets of almost everything I have or, on the other hand, it may be one long improvisation based entirely
on one motif. All of these possibilities could be completely saturated in dissonance approaching 'noise', or favoring original comprovisations based on world musics, or a combination of both which is the most integrative, and I believe, the strangest and inspiring of all.
This musical approach I have developed gives me an almost infinite flexibility, allowing me to reach many types of audiences, confront the problems of the world, and offer a challenging sonic response. By both critics and audience members, my music has been described as absolutely unique but also compared to musicians as diverse as Bela Bartok, Gamelan music, Cecil Taylor, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Captain Beefheart, Hindustani music, Thelonious Monk, and Conlan Nancarrow, among many others. However, all maintain that it is it's own thing. I am honored that my music conjures sonic images of all these people/groups, but this diversity of relations is what's most important to me. Of course none of us live in a vacuum, we are all influenced by each other, and also by so much more than just people. What's necessary to me is that I make an authentic contribution to the world of music and humanity.
Finally, I have performed in concert halls, warehouses, libraries, jazz and rock clubs, as the soloist in piano concertos, in a West-african drumming troupe, in the desert surrounding the Nevada nuclear test site on Shoshone land, on t.v., radio and in riots, punk bands, many free improv ensembles, with famous people, infamous people, unknowns, old masters, and eager youngsters, academics and hippies, for modern dance and opera, sometimes only for myself, and sometimes only in my mind.
In Loving Memory Of My Mother
Geraldine Serine Sept. 30, 1940 - Dec. 31, 2008
Please check www.thollem.com for latest news, concerts, and releases as I don't use MySpace very much...
Thollem Mcdonas was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area of Irish and Cherokee descent. Not long after birth he began studying the keyboard repertoire from the medieval to the 20th century and studied with many notable teachers including Aiko Onishi, Lou Harrison and Allen Strange. After graduating with degrees in both piano performance and composition he decided to roam the west coast with a backpck rather than pursue a career as a concert pianist. He worked for several years in grassroots political movements and ecological restoration projects before coming back to music with his full focus. He is currently touring perpetually, back and forth between Europe and the States, mostly as a soloist but also in collaboration with many other individuals and groups.
Thollem's travels as a performer and teacher have covered much of the North American continent and Europe (he often leads listening and group improvisation workshops as well as master-classes). He is a founding member of several innovative ensembles, and is responsible, in full or in part, for many albums of original music on several different vanguard labels from several different countries. His music is diverse, with each album and every concert exploring a variety of approaches and paths, resulting in dramatically different outcomes.
Thollem is a 2006 recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Meet The Composer grant. He was commissioned by The Limon Dance Company for a large-scale piece in commemoration of their 50th year anniversary. Last Autumn he spent 15 weeks playing 65 concerts while circumnavigating the U.S. covering over 19,000 miles. This September he has been invited to perform the late works of Claude Debussy on the piano on which they were written, as well as his own comprovisations with Stefano Scodanibbio. This will be the first album (There Seen From Other Places) ever recorded on Debussy's piano.
Thollem has performed in theaters, art galleries, universities, elementary schools, concert halls, jazz clubs, rock clubs, festivals, warehouses, house concerts, streets, forests, riots and on television and radio. He has performed piano concertos with symphonies, played in West African drumming troupes, Javanese gamelan ensembles, an afro-punk band, with hundreds of free improv groups, and as an accompanist and a composer for opera and modern dance. His music appeals to a wide variety of audiences because of these rich and wildly disparate experiences. Currently Thollem primarily plays his own comprovisations which he calls Eccentriclect Music, for people and everyone else.
CALENDAR 2009:
*April 17th at The Detroit Institute for the Arts - Detroit, MI with BoxDeserterTrio (Skeeter Shelton and Joel Peterson)
*April 18th at Kerry Town Concert Hall, Ann Arbor, MI with BoxDeserterTrio
*April 19th at Hungry Brain, Chicago IL with BoxDeserterTrio
*April 20th at The Iron Post, Champaign-Urbana, IL with BoxDeserterTrio
*April 21st at Creative Music Forum, Springfield, IL with BoxDeserterTrio
*April 23rd at The Tap Room, St. Louis, MO BoxDeserterTrio
*April 24th at The Tap Room, St. Louis, MO BoxDeserterTrio
*April 24th at Mangia (late night), St. Louis, MO BoxDeserterTrio
*April 25th at Earth House, Indianopolis, IN BoxDeserterTrio
*April 26th at Urban Spirit, Columbus, OH BoxDeserterTrio
*April 28th at Exile, NY, NY BoxDeserterTrio
*April 29th at Wilkes-Barre, PN BoxDeserterTrio
*April 30th at 2739 Edwin, Detroit, MI, BoxDeserterTrio
*May 1st at 1812 Church St., Detroit, MI, BoxDeserterTrio (Benefit for World Social Forum)
*May 3rd at Church, Portland OR with Tim Duroche, Scott Stobbe and more...!
*May 5th at PSU, Portland, OR (Comprovisation Workshop)
*May 6th at PSU, Portland, OR (Solo Concert)
*May 7th at 1412 Gallery, Seattle, WA (Solos and duos with Amy Denio)
*Working On New Projects
*June 27-July 12th at Prisma Forum, Oaxaca/Mexico City, Mexico (Leading Comprovisation Workshop)
*July 16th and 17th at Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts, Morelia, Mexico (Leading A Comprovisation Workshop, Solo concert)
*July 22nd at Edgetone Summit, San Francisco with Vinny Golia, Rent Romus, Damon Smith and more...
*July 31st at Central Park Summer Stage Festival, NY, NY with Viewsic Expression/Germaul Barnes
*August 1st at St. Mary's Park, The Bronx, NY with Viewsic Expression/Germaul Barnes
*August 13th at X-Initiative with Martha Colburn, NY, NY
*August 14th at AS220 with Martha Colburn, Frank Difficult and more, Providence, RI
*August 18th at Bowery Poetry Club, NY, NY
*September 11th at ExperimentalPianoSeries (EPS) Chicago, IL
*October 10th at Trinity Chamber Concerts Berkeley, CA With Bloom Project
*Working on new projects
*October 18th at Brava! Theater, San Francisco, CA with Martha Colburn
*November 2nd at Mills College, Oakland, CA Solo Piano
*November 5th at San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art San Francisco, CA With Martha Colburn and John Dieterich (Deerhoof)
*November 7th, 8th, 9th Fonoteca Nacional Mexico City with Estamos Ensemble (recording)
*November 10th at Festival Internacional de Puebla Puebla, Mexico with Estamos Ensemble
*November 12th at SF MOMA San Francisco, CA With Martha Colburn, John Dietrich, Jad Fair, Mike Evans...
*November 16th at Anthology Film Archive NY, NY with Martha Colburn
*November 27th, 28th, 29th Gap, France Improvisation Workshops
*November 27th at Centre Municipal Culture et Loisirs, Gap France with
*December 1st at Syncronie Festival Milano, Italy with Duo with Stefano Scodanibbio
*December 2nd at Jam Station Ravenna, Italy Solo
*December 4th at Terminal Macerata, Italy, Solo
*December 5th at AreaSismica Meldola, Italy
*December 6th at Ivan Illich Bologna, Italy
*December 10th at CSO Spartaco Ravenna, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 11th at Menza Pri Koritu Ljubljana, Slovenia With Tsigoti
*December 12th at MKC Koper, Slovenia With Tsigoti
*December 16th at Galleria Da. Co. Terni, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 17th at Spazio 72 Grosseto, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 18th at La Cite Firenze, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 19th at Trok! Milano, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 20th at Arci Aur-ora Piccolo Teatro Bolzano, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 21st - 31st recording 3rd album with Tsigoti
*January 3rd at Teatro Refugio Livorno, Italia Solo Piano
*January19th at Umlaut Berlin, Germany Solo Piano
*January 30th at Rotterdam International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands
With Martha Colburn and McCloud Zicmuse
Thank you very much Thollem, I saw you two or three years ago at Scuola Ivan Illich in Bologna... great concert! I hope to meet you in december. Elia / Voce Saxophone Quintet
Hey Thollem, I enjoy your music very much too. I performed with Vinny Golia too. Here's a my space site of Bubble Fauna, a free improv guitarduet with Christian Vasseur and as a guest Bruce Arnold? Best wishes Gilbert
