New Releases:
Lost World Tango
Listen to samples and purchase tracks on the CD Baby website.
Read a review of Lost World Tango on the All About Jazz website.
Archival Remnants and Other Fragments
Enjoy 72 minutes of previously unreleased music from the archives of Ron Thomas, experimental and electronic works from 1972-2007, many originally created for independent Philadelphia dancers and choreographers.
Reviews and Interviews:
Ron Thomas interviewed on the Jake Feinberg Show in 2012. A 54-minute recording of an interview first heard on Radio KWFM.
Article by Rebecca Tirrell Talbot in Curator Magazine, Sept. 16, 2011 "Ultimate Liberty, Ultimate Fun. Ron Thomas has been producing and recording original jazz and classical music since the 1960s."
Review by Dan McClenaghan of Where The Jade Buddha Lives. "A flexible and highly interactive crew that combines a feeling for freedom with an unerring instinct for ethereal beauty."
Blues for Zarathustra: "Nothing short of brilliant" says Elliott Simon.
Wings of the Morning reviewed by Budd Kopman on the All About Jazz website.
August, 2007 interview in Philadelphia's Mainline Today magazine.
17 Solo Piano Improvisations reviewed by Budd Kopman on the All About Jazz website.
Doloroso reviewed by Dan McClenaghan on All About Jazz
Cycles reviewed by Dan McClenaghan on the All About Jazz website.
Music in Three Parts reviewed by Dan McClenaghan on All About Jazz.
Music in Three Parts: short review on AllMusic.com, with samples and an option to purchase the CD.
House of Counted Days reviewed by Dan McClenaghan on the All About Jazz website.
Ron Thomas performs and records jazz, classical and improvisation on the piano and other keyboards. His compositions cover these many styles of music, which he teaches as well. Recent reviews and interviews are listed to the right. Click here to contact Ron directly.
Performances
Recordings
Listen On-Line
- Full-length MP3 files of previously unreleased work.
- Samples are available on cdBaby, Amazon, iTunes, IndieRhythm, and on Tarnius Music.
- Ron Thomas' music can be heard on SKY.FM/SoloPiano.
- "Archival Remnants and Other Fragments"
Teaching
- Music and Arts in Exton, PA. Call 484 875-0101.
- Philadelphia Biblical University in Langhorne, PA. Call 215 702-4329.
- Private lessons at Ron's home studio in Coatesville, Pennsylvania or through an on-line arrangement.
Essays
- “A fascination with things distant ... The everyday impression, sentiment, experience ... An obscurity of a different order ... The hyper-beautiful musical event ... A subterfuge clearly designed as a cover for capricious quasi-aimless ecstatic reading and listening of music ... ”
Click here to see Ron's essays.
Fragments: An Autobiography
- “What is well-loved in youth never disappears. It is always present in some form or other however wayward or submerged.” --Robin Holloway. "Somewhere around 1900, Eleazar Thomas migrated from Wales to settle in the coal-mining community of Dickson City, Pennsylvania . . ." Click here to read Ron's autobiography, Fragments, a work in progress.
Influences and Friends
- John Cage, Elliot Carter, Ron Dewar, Jon English, Bill Evans, Nicolas Flagello, Vittorio Gianinni, Hellmut Gottschild, Sir Roland Hanna, Pat Martino, M. William (Bill) Karlins, Sal Martirano, Will Parsons, Hobson Pittman, Raoul Pleskow, Michael Steinberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Igor Stravinsky, Ludmila Ulehla, Stefan Wolpe, and many more. [In the photo at the left, we see, from left to right: Ron Thomas, Bill Karlins, Raoul Pleskow, Austin Clarkson and Ed Levy at the 1998 Conference Crosscurrents in Jazz and New Music: The School and Schooling of Stefan Wolpe" Temple University, Philadelphia, 1998.] Click here to see the Influences page.
Colleagues
Compositions
Photographs
- Photo Gallery: Images from a life full of musicians and their music.
- 23 Photos by Shane McCauley of Ron Thomas in 2007.
Ron's brother, artist Glenn Thomas
- Interview with Glenn Thomas
“I am personally more interested in contemporary music than the visual arts, and feel very influenced by it.... I sometimes think I'm a composer who paints.” - The Inner Life of Martin Frost
A collaboration of writer Paul Auster and Glenn Thomas. The Inner Life of Martin Frost by Paul Auster and Glenn Thomas is now available for purchase from Amazon.com. - Best Book Design of 2008
An award by Design & Publishing for The Inner Life of Martin Frost. - The Glenn Thomas website