Baritone Thomas Buckner has dedicated himself to the world of new and improvised music as a performer and producer for more than 30 years. He has been instrumental in the creation of an extensive body of new works through his steadfast advocacy of living composers. In the past two decades, he has premiered more than 70 works written exclusively for him by some of the world's most challenging composers, including Robert Ashley, Roscoe Mitchell, Alvin Lucier, Annea Lockwood, Bun-Ching Lam, Jerome Cooper, Somei Satoh, Tom Hamilton, Leroy Jenkins, Phill Niblock, and Wadada Leo Smith.

Recent performance highlights include appearances in northern Germany with percussionist/composer Matthias Kaul; an appearance at the Santa Fe International Festival of Electro-acoustic Music (SFIFEM) performing works by Creshevsky, Lucier, Niblock and Kimura; and the West Coast premiere of Say You Have This Ball of Meaning by Alvin Singleton at the Santa Clara University New Music Festival.

Buckner’s voice has been featured on over 40 recordings, including four solo albums - including five solo albums; his latest, Contexts, has recently been released on the Mutable Music label. He can also be heard on New World, Lovely Music, and Nonesuch performing the music of an impressive array of composers, as well as his own improvisations. For the past sixteen seasons he has curated and co-produced the World Music Institute's Interpretations series in New York City. He was awarded the American Music Center's Letter of Distinction and was recently honored at Town Hall by The Kitchen at its celebration of the 25th anniversary of New Sound New York.

 

 

 

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