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Welcome to my website. I make music in a wide variety of styles from experimental music in concert halls to fiddle tunes in the subways. You can listen to examples by clicking on the "mp3" link to the left. See below for upcoming events, links to purchase cds and watch videos and (down at the bottom) my artistic statement.
A year ago I edited and recorded the music for my family's home movies from the 60's, 70's and 80's.
Thursday December 29 8pm
Sunday January 1 8pm
Monday January 2 8pm
Friday January 6 9pm
In May 2011 at The Stone I presented an eclectic concert of (mostly) solo pieces written for 9 fantastic musician friends of mine. Click here to watch it on youtube. I played on guitarist/composer Aram Bajakian's great new album, Aram Bajakian's Kef, which is out now on Tzadik and is getting great reviews. Click here to read one. Click here to buy my solo violin cd, 7th Avenue, or download it from Rhapsody or you can find it on iTunes. Click here to watch a funny promotional film from the '60's that I composed new music for. Click here to watch a video about my life as a subway musician. Click here to watch a video of a performance of my new piece Suspensions of Disbelief, by the Detour New Music Ensemble at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. We had a very successful second performance of my concert, The Real (?) Me at Roulette on March 19, 2010. Gelsey Bell did an outstanding performance of This is the Real Me, which I wrote in collaboration with Gelsey. Lee Todd Lacks did a bang up job with the hatemail piece, Your (so called) 'Music' and Matt Crane and I tore it up on some improvised duo extrapolations of themes from This is the Real Me. Click here to read an interview about that concert. Click here to read program notes and see videos from the November 15 performance of this concert. I perform with rock band Emanuel and the Fear, folk musician Andrew James Jr. , my own 12 piece group String Power (to hear samples and become a fan click here!), the violin/percussion duo Golden Crackers and in various other solo and ensemble contexts. I can also be heard busking in the NYC subway stations. My Artistic Statement:
I am continually searching for my own way to combine all of the vastly different types of music I have played into one personal style. But music is about much more than any individual person. For me, music is about connection between musicians, between musician and composer, between musician and audience and between every person that has created music throughout human existence. Music is organic. A tune takes on increasing layers of meaning every time it is played. People may have completely opposing interpretations depending on what associations they have with a particular piece or style. Any assessments of the quality of a musical style are subjective. Everyone values music differently, depending on their experience. I want people to feel as though they have been taken somewhere when I play. I want to challenge people; this is when they are moved. Otherwise the music becomes like wall paper, in the background and not really noticed. But at the same time, music can be like a foreign language; you might appreciate the sound of it for a moment but you tune it out after a while because you cannot understand. Either way nothing is being communicated. I know what is like to move people with music. This feeling is immensely rewarding and when this happens, when people are genuinely affected by music, it is because both musician and audience are so engaged that they forget their egos and tap into something greater. The person in the audience, the musician on stage and the composer are all joined together and become part of music's endless stream.-Tom Swafford 2007 |
| Copyright © 2007 Tom Swafford All rights reserved. Designed by Tony Greaves |
