“Each project from the composer and multi-reed player Ken Thomson has been good news, whether he’s writing for chamber players or groups that bridge jazz improvisation and contemporary composition.” – The New York Times

He currently co-leads Anzû Quartet, an international ensemble dedicated to performing and commissioning for Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” instrumentation, who will be releasing two CDs in 2025-2026 on Cantaloupe Music, including adjust, featuring his three-part composition “Uneasy,” featured as the Top Contemporary Classical CDs in Bandcamp  His new Berlin-based project, Lingua Franca, is a through-composed band jumping between improvisation, contemporary music and math-punk, featuring top musicians from the city; the group has toured Germany and its debut recording is coming soon.

His previous projects combining the sounds of jazz and contemporary music, Sextet and Slow/Fast, garnered Top of 2018 placement from websites Second Inversion and AnEarful and have toured Europe and the US, played the Saalfelden Jazz Festival and more; and were praised by The NY Times in a full review for their “intricate long-form compositions.” He has released heralded full-length CDs of his compositions in 2013 with JACK Quartet (Thaw) and 2016 with cellist Ashley Bathgate and pianist Karl Larson (Restless).

Besides his own groups, Ken plays clarinets for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, one of the world’s preeminent contemporary music ensembles. As a teaching artist, he is on faculty at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and has given composition master classes to multiple universities across the globe, and taught as guest faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Masters program and as a composer mentor at the Ensemble Offspring Hatched Academy in Sydney, Australia. 

As a composer, he has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Lorelei Ensemble, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vonk, the True/False Film Festival, Doug Perkins, Mariel Roberts, and others, and has received awards from New Music USA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, ASCAP and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. He is also a prolific arranger, with arrangements recorded by Meredith Monk (called “Top 25 Classical Tracks of 2020” by The New York Times) and David Byrne/St Vincent.  He has recently arranged the entire album “1996” by Ryuichi Sakamoto for the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Performing with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, he has appeared as a soloist with the LA Philharmonic, Danish Radio Symphony, Nashville Symphony, BBC and RTE Concert Orchestra, and more. As a clarinetist and saxophonist, he has performed and recorded with Ensemble Signal (conducted by Brad Lubman), working directly with Steve Reich, Helmut Lachenmann, Charles Wuorinen and others. He has collaborated with many new-composed music groups including Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Novus NY, Splinter Reeds, and more.

He has also worked as a music director, notably, directing composer Julia Wolfe’s “Traveling Music” at the Bordeaux Conservatory, France, 2009, and has conducted performances of “Music for Airports” with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, choir, and guest musicians from Melbourne to Buenos Aires.

From the late 90s until late 2010s, he played saxophone and was one of the 4 composers in the punk/chamber/jazz band Gutbucket, with whom he toured internationally to twenty countries and 32 states over twenty years.  For ten years, he musically directed the Asphalt Orchestra, an 8-piece next-generation avant-garde street band who debuted in long runs at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival.

He has recently been the subject of profile features in Downbeat, NewMusicBox and Critical Read. He is a F. Arthur Uebel Artist and D’Addario Woodwinds Artist.