upcoming shows
Bang on a Can plays Julia Wolfe
Bang on a Can All-Stars
National Sawdust, Brooklyn, NY map
add to gCalKen Thomson “Lingua Franca” tour
Ken Thomson "Lingua Franca"
Unterfahrt, Munich, Germany map
add to gCalKen Thomson “Lingua Franca” tour
Ken Thomson "Lingua Franca"
Donau 115, Berlin, Germany map
add to gCalprojects
Bang on a Can All-Stars
Acclaimed internationally-touring electro-acoustic sextet for which I largely play clarinet and bass clarinet. This group, directed by the Bang on a Can collective in NYC, has worked with an exhaustive list of composers over 20 years, while focusing on the music of artistic directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. I have been a member of this fantastic group since 2013.
Ken Thomson Sextet
My compositions for horns and rhythm section — I’m playing alto saxophone with Anna Webber, tenor, Russ Johnson, trumpet, Alan Ferber, trombone, Adam Armstrong, bass, and Daniel Dor, drums. New record out September 7, 2018 on New Focus/Panoramic Recording (Naxos), with American and European tours.
Anzû Quartet
Formed in 2020, the Anzû Quartet is an ensemble dedicated to the music of our time and the recent canon. A collaboration between internationally renowned performers of contemporary music, this new quartet pays homage to Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps by actively commissioning and performing new works for this iconic instrumentation alongside Messiaen’s original masterpiece. The members of Anzû are veterans of New York City’s vital contemporary music community and have frequently collaborated with one another across a wide range of musical endeavors and acclaimed international performances. Olivia De Prato (violin), Ashley Bathgate (cello), Ken Thomson (clarinet) and Karl Larson (piano) have been lauded by critics and musicians worldwide, and have been instrumental in helping form and cement the work of important NY-based chamber groups such as the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Mivos Quartet, Ensemble Signal and Bearthoven.
Asphalt Orchestra
I am the music director and alto saxophonist for this 8-piece virtuoso street band that plays music from across the world, performing outdoors at festivals and indoors at theaters across the US and Europe. After working with everyone from Yoko Ono to Goran Bregovic, David Byrne, St. Vincent, and more, Asphalt’s released a re-imagination of the Pixies record Surfer Rosa, which debuted at Lincoln Center Out of Doors in Summer 2013 and was released on Cantaloupe Music in Fall 2014. In 2018, the group played a weeklong set of concerts at the Bravo Vail music festival in Colorado.
Gutbucket
This punk/jazz 4-piece collective has been going strong since 1999 — having toured 33 US states and 19 countries across the USA and Europe, and released 6 CDs and a DVD on Cuneiform Records, Cantaloupe Music/Enja Records, NRW, Plattenfroster and Knitting Factory Records.
Bang on a Can Summer Festival
I’m on performance faculty here with an incredible team of colleagues. This festival, for emerging composers and performers, features inspiring student-fellows every summer, and is always a highlight of the year — with multiple daily concerts, packed rehearsal days, and an ending marathon concert all at the Mass MoCA museum in the Berkshires, Massachusetts.
compositions
Chamber
Solo/Duo
Chamber Orchestra
Orchestra
Gutbucket
Recorded works only - for alto saxophone, gtr, bass, drums
Soundtrack
Slow/Fast
through-composed distorted/clean jazz quintet
discography
Featured Composer
Featured Performer
More as Composer/Arranger
More as Performer
press
Critical Read feature: Begin at the End
Ken Thomson & Slow/Fast: Settle critical acclaim
It Would Be Easier If – review, New York Times [PDF]
Reviews of THAW in Altoriot, WQXR Radio, Textura, Downbeat
NPR: 10 Songs Public Radio Can’t Stop Playing, Rhapsody #1 Classical CD of 2013 and check out the feature on Bayerischer Rundfunk BR-Klassik
press photos
about
Thomson has a growing catalog of music written for ensembles of different sizes, and has released a number of albums with groups that he has created. His latest effort combining the sounds of jazz and contemporary music, Sextet, garnered Top of 2018 placement from websites Second Inversion and AnEarful and has toured to Europe and across the US. His previous project, a five-piece group called Slow/Fast with whom he released two albums, toured to the Saalfelden Jazz Festival and more; the group was praised by The New York Times in a full review for its “intricate long-form compositions.” He released heralded full-length CDs of his compositions in 2013 with JACK Quartet (Thaw) and in 2016 with cellist Ashley Bathgate and pianist Karl Larson (Restless).
Besides his own groups, Ken plays clarinet for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, one of the world’s preeminent contemporary music ensembles. He co-leads Anzû Quartet, an ensemble based on Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, dedicated to performing that work and commissioning for its instrumentation. He is the musical director for the Asphalt Orchestra, an 8-piece next-generation avant-garde street band. He plays saxophone and is 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.
As a teaching artist, he is on faculty at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and has given composer master classes to multiple universities across the globe, and as guest faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Masters program and 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, 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. His arrangement of Meredith Monk’s “Downfall” was called one of the “Top 25 Classical Tracks of 2020” by The New York Times.
Performing with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, he has appeared as a soloist with the LA Philharmonic, Danish Radio Symphony, BBC and RTE Concert Orchestra, and more. He has performed and recorded with Ensemble Signal (conducted by Brad Lubman), working directly with composers from Steve Reich to Helmut Lachenmann and performing on CDs for Harmonia Mundi, Mode, Orange Mountain, and Cantaloupe Records. He is a frequent collaborator with many new-composed music groups including Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Novus NY, Eighth Blackbird, 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.
He has recently been the subject of profile features in Downbeat, NewMusicBox and Critical Read. He is a F. Arthur Uebel Artist, D’Addario Woodwinds Artist, and Conn-Selmer endorser.
contact
publisher
clusterhocket music (ascap)
- Conn-Selmer (Yanagisawa saxophones) and F. Arthur Uebel clarinets.
- D’Addario Reeds