David Evan Thomas

The music of David Evan Thomas has been praised for its eloquence, power and craft. A two-time McKnight Foundation Fellow, he has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Guild of Organists. Thomas has received commissions from the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Schubert Club and the American Composers Forum. Thomas’s music is published by ECS, Augsburg Fortress and MorningStar, and has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, London’s Westminster Cathedral Choir and the trio of Gil Shaham, Truls Mørk and Yefim Bronfman. He has served as composer-in-residence with Westminster Presbyterian Church (Minneapolis), the Cathedral of Saint Paul, and from 1997-2005, The Schubert Club. Born in Rochester, New York in 1958, David Evan Thomas graduated with honors in trumpet from the “Prep” Department of the Eastman School of Music, and received degrees from Northwestern University, Eastman and the University of Minnesota. His teachers have included Dominick Argento, Samuel Adler and Alan Stout, with further study at the Aspen Festival and with David Diamond at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

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Chamber Music

SENSUOUS, COLORFUL AND EXPRESSIVE: Thomas works playfully with motives, varying and combining them, allowing them to emerge in changing hues. Thus, the melodic arches, the singing lines which distinguish a fanciful musical medium and make the music warm, even catchy, step forth. –Roland Schmidt, AbendZeitung

Elegy for a Singer

RSO SCORES WITH PREMIERE OF ELEGY. Among the two or three most beautiful works whose first performances I’ve heard from the RSO. 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, it glowed with a radiant beauty. It would be good to hear the Roanoke Symphony do more new music like this. –Seth Williamson, Roanoke Times

Thrum

The real treasure here is David Evan Thomas’s Thrum. . . in invention, expressiveness, excitement, and the fresh voice of the composer. –Ken Keaton, American Record Guide

Oboe Concerto

A likable, gracefully neo-Classic score with a great deal of interplay between the oboe and soloists within the orchestra, and some delightfully worked-out counterpoint. –Allan Kozinn, New York Times Full of attractive orchestration and powerful phrases. –Peter Goodman, NY Newsday

Elegy for a Singer

. . . [An] affecting work, the strings sing a rich, winding melody that goes through several permutations, followed by a contrasting section and a return to the opening melody, but this time slightly altered and more passionately stated. The overall form is clear-cut and simple, but the piece carries a considerable emotional weight—it sounds in places like a Mahler adagio—and its string writing is skillful. –Michael Anthony, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Marilyn Perkins Biery plays “Wondrous Love” by David Evan Thomas at Rockefeller Chapel, University of Chicago.

Composer David Evan Thomas talks about the creation of a new work for the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphony Orchestra, composed at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts.

THE FIRST APOSTLE, Part 1. Music by David Evan Thomas. Natalie Arduino, mezzo-soprano; Dann Coakwell, tenor; David Grogan, bass; Keith Weber, conductor

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David Evan Thomas

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