A pianist and composer, Thomas Turner has been on the music faculties of several major state universities in the USA for about thirty years. Although currently retired from the University of North Carolina system, he has, in recent years, given recitals in New York and in several cities in Germany. He has given first performances of music by living composers, and his own music has been heard in such places as Wigmore Hall in London (where he also gave the first performance in Great Britain of Stockhausen's Klavierstück IX); Alice Tully Hall in New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; as well as the St. Lawrence Center in Toronto.
He has received a number of grants and awards, including ten grants from "Meet the Composer", and the Hinda Honigman Award from the North Carolina Federation of Music Clubs. He studied composition with Eugene Weigel, a pupil of Paul Hindemith, and piano with Webster Aitken, a pupil of Artur Schnabel.
As a pianist, his musical preferences tend to center on Schubert, late Beethoven, Liszt's "impressionistic" music, and certain twentieth-century works, particularly those that have been inspired by folk music. As a composer, he is noted for his vocal writing and his chamber music. His music is published by Boston Music Co. (Unicorn), and Seesaw Music Co. in New York City.
While a resident of London in the late 1960s, Mr. Turner wrote musical criticism for the London Times Educational Supplement. In recent years he has been an artist in residence at Frost Valley in the Catskill Mountains of New York, and at Montalvo Center for the Arts in Saratoga, California.
In 2003, he was a guest of Chicago a cappella at the world premiere performances of his choral piece, "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?".
For concert engagements, commissions, and master classes, you may contact him directly, or contact Perzanowski Management, 640 West End Avenue, New York, NY, 10024; telephone: 212.787.0517; e-mail: permgmt@aol.com.