Draft:David Evan Thomas

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David Evan Thomas (b. 1958) is an American composer, born to a musical family in Rochester, New York. His father, flutist John Thomas, was on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music. As a high school student, David Thomas attended Eastman's Preparatory Department, studying composition with David Russell Williams and graduating with honors in trumpet. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, he studied trumpet with Vincent Cichowicz and developed his composition and conducting skills. He went on to earn an MM from the Eastman School of Music and a PhD from the University of Minnesota.

David Evan Thomas has written more than forty chamber pieces, music for orchestra and wind ensemble, and numerous solo works for piano and organ. His vocal music includes an opera, an oratorio, fifty choral works, and twelve song cycles. His compositions have been featured on nine albums, including Transformations: Music by David Evan Thomas (2023).

Thomas's composition teachers have included Dominick Argento, Samuel Adler, Alan Stout, and David Diamond.

Early career

David Evan Thomas received many of his first performances while still a student at Northwestern University, where he wrote organ and choral music for religious services at the university's Alice Millar Chapel. These pieces include "Carol Suite" and "Pastorale," both for flute and organ, "Infant Song (On the Morning of Christ's Nativity)," for tenor and organ on texts by Milton, and "Evensong," for chorus and chamber ensemble.

In the 1980's, as a master's student at Eastman, and then a professor at Montana State University Billings, Thomas experimented with atonal, serial, and aleatoric music. However, even then his music suggested a grounding in earlier eras. For example, when his challenging oboe concerto -- one of his first larger works -- was performed at Carnegie Hall in 1989, a New York Times reviewer referenced Thomas's neo-Classic style and his deft use of counterpoint, and a Newsday critic noted his skill at orchestration.

Minnesota years

Following his tenure at Montana State, Thomas moved to Minneapolis to study composition with Dominick Argento at the University of Minnesota. It was during this period that he wrote his first opera, The Lass of Galway, based on James Joyce's "The Dead."

Thomas completed his PhD in 1996 and decided to leave academia to become an independent composer, based in Minneapolis. Living in Minnesota influenced his compositional voice, prompting a move away from avant-garde music toward a more approachable, tonal sound. In the composer's words, "The music I've written here, I think of as returning to a more authentic expression of my musical voice...If you’re going to set up a musical structure that lasts any amount of time, you have to move tonally. Otherwise the music will die."

Critics have commented on Thomas's use of tonality, describing his musical style as expressive and even sensual. Michael Anthony reviewed Thomas's Elegy for a Singer (for strings, harp, and celeste), commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra, comparing its emotional weight to that of Romantic composer Gustav Mahler. Of the same work, critic Seth Williamson wrote, "After a century during which the phrase 'modern music' was all it took to evacuate most concert halls, this is the kind of piece that should convince average concertgoers that it's safe to go back in the water. A piece unmistakably of its own day, and yet in a triad-based tonal language that's unafraid of major chords." Thomas has a distinctly American sound, in the tradition of Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem, and Samuel Barber.

Organist Marilyn Biery, who has premiered many of Thomas's compositions, argues that he strikes a good balance between consonance and dissonance. She wrote, "The harmonic language used by Thomas for [organ duet] Written in the Dust is reminiscent of late-19th-century post-Romantic tonality or early 20th-century Impressionism. Thomas's harmonies are functional, yet he uses dissonance in biting as well as gentle ways. In her doctoral dissertation on Thomas's music, Katie Moss agreed, noting, "To create dissonance, Thomas layers simple musical material that 'naturally' collides when stacked...I believe that what makes this music most successful is that this careful and meticulous process of composition is paired with an accessible harmonic language and forms that root us in the music of the past."

David Evan Thomas has lived in Minneapolis-St. Paul for more than three decades and is firmly integrated into the artistic life of his community. About Thomas's Pavilions, a commission for amateur chamber orchestra, Minneapolis Star Tribune critic Kay Miller wrote, "The piece is emblematic of the best of the Twin Cities: One of the state's star composers works with a low-budget group of committed musicians, capturing the essence of a cohesive, storied Minneapolis neighborhood." Another Star Tribune journalist called Thomas "an introspective Twin Cities composer" and commented on his delicate, sophisticated style.

In her dissertation about Thomas, Katie Moss wrote, "Though many [of his] choral and chamber works have been performed outside Minnesota, the number of elite performing groups in the Twin Cities area ensure that, here, his music is performed widely and well. Thomas may be especially well known in the Twin Cities for his vocal music, particularly his collaborations with poet Michael Dennis Browne. Thomas credits his teacher Dominick Argento for influencing his vocal writing, saying, "The voice is at the heart of everything Dominick wrote. The fact that a voice is connected to a human being and an emotion was hugely important to him."

David Evan Thomas was composer-in-residence at the Schubert Club, Westminster Presbyterian Church (Minneapolis), and the Cathedral of St. Paul. He has written program notes for the Minnesota Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall, the Schubert Club, and the Brevard Festival.

Awards

Thomas has been awarded two McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowships and an American Guild of Organists Award in Choral Composition. He has also received the Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (AAAL), which wrote of his music in its award citation: "A lyric gift of gentleness yet strong in its articulation, his music sings and weaves its way through sonorities of varying hues and weights. Music as sensitive as his, one is grateful for in times when sensibility of any kind seems a risk rather than an endeavor." In 2018 Thomas was initiated into Sigma Alpha Iota Fraternity (SAI) as a National Arts Associate.

His music is published by Opus Imprints, ECS, and several other publishers.