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    <description><![CDATA[                       IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY MOTHER GERALDINE SERINE
                                            Sept. 30, 1940 - Dec. 31, 2008

Thollem Mcdonas was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area of Irish and Cherokee descent. Not long after birth he began studying the keyboard repertoire from the medieval to the 20th century and studied with many notable teachers including Aiko Onishi and Lou Harrison and Allen Strange. After graduating with degrees in both piano performance and composition he decided to roam the west coast with a backpck rather than pursue a career as a concert pianist.  He worked for several years in grassroots political movements and ecological restoration projects before coming back to music with his full focus.  He is currently touring perpetually, back and forth between Europe and the States, mostly as a soloist but also in collaboration with many other individuals and groups.. 
     Thollem's travels as a performer and teacher have covered much of the North American continent and Europe (he often leads listening and group improvisation workshops as well as master-classes). He is a founding member of several innovative ensembles, and is responsible, in full or in part, for many albums of original music on several different vanguard labels from several different countries. His music is diverse, with each album and every concert exploring a variety of approaches and paths, resulting in dramatically different outcomes.  
     Thollem is a 2006 recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Meet The Composer grant.  He was commissioned by The Limon Dance Company for a large-scale piece in commemoration of their 50th year anniversary. Last Autumn he spent 15 weeks playing 65 concerts while circumnavigating the U.S. covering over 19,000 miles. This September he has been invited to perform the late works of Claude Debussy on the piano on which they were written, as well as his own comprovisations with Stefano Scodanibbio. This will be the first album (There Seen From Other Places) ever recorded on Debussy's piano.  
     Thollem has performed in theaters, art galleries, universities, elementary schools, concert halls, jazz clubs, rock clubs, festivals, warehouses, house concerts, streets, forests, riots and on television and radio. He has performed piano concertos with symphonies, played in West African drumming troupes, Javanese gamelan ensembles, an afro-punk band, with hundreds of free improv groups, and as an accompanist and a composer for opera and modern dance. His music appeals to a wide variety of audiences because of these rich and wildly disparate experiences. Currently Thollem primarily plays his own comprovisations which he calls Confluence Music, for people and everyone else.

"Thollem Mcdonas does what few can: He combines extreme imagination with terrific postclassical chops and an ability to communicate through melody."
Greg Burk, L.A. Times  

"Thollem has that rare gift of soulful equilibrium, which he alternates with digital dexterities that have few equals on the current scene. My favourite moments doing my reviewer's job are like this, the very instant when you come across a genius and are among the first ones to realize and tell the world."
- Massimo Ricci, TouchingExtremes

"McDonas' piano are Defalla (driving rhythms and Iberian modes), Schoenberg (unresolved dissonances a mile high), the collapsing/expanding tempi of Nancarrow, and splatterings of Cecil Taylor..."
-Tom Djll, Signal to Noise 

"Thollem dives headlong into fascinating unforeseen and bold musical adventures that make him one of the most interesting pianists of the current improvised music genre". Eduardo Chagas, Tomajazz

"McDonas welds elements of jazz, blues and classical music into a mighty tower of song, then shatters his construct with the breathless bull-rush of a mystic improviser."
-The River Front Times 

"McDonas is a pianist with highly developed technical skills at the piano. His flourishes and runs up and down the keyboard are executed with crystal clarity."
- Winthrop Bedford, Jazz Improv Magazine  

"With each song McDonas creates a universe of its own...very original... a fresh voice" 
- Dolf Mulder, VitalWeekly

"Pianist Thollem McDonas is a particularly powerful voice, stacking huge gravities of chords one on top of the other with little regard for conventional musical syntax." 
David Keenan, Glasgow

LABELS:
Edgetone Records, Pax Records, Creative Sources, Saravah
Albums coming this year on: ESP Disk, Porter Records, and Amirani Records

CONCERTS FOR 2009

*April 17th at The Detroit Institute for the Arts - Detroit, MI with BoxDeserterTrio (Skeeter Shelton and Joel Peterson)
*April 18th at Kerry Town Concert Hall, Ann Arbor, MI with BoxDeserterTrio
*April 19th at Hungry Brain, Chicago IL with BoxDeserterTrio
*April 20th at The Iron Post, Champaign-Urbana, IL with BoxDeserterTrio
*April 21st at Creative Music Forum, Springfield, IL with BoxDeserterTrio
*April 23rd at The Tap Room, St. Louis, MO BoxDeserterTrio
*April 24th at The Tap Room, St. Louis, MO BoxDeserterTrio
*April 24th at Mangia (late night), St. Louis, MO BoxDeserterTrio
*April 25th at Earth House, Indianopolis, IN BoxDeserterTrio
*April 26th at Urban Spirit, Columbus, OH BoxDeserterTrio
*April 28th at Exile, NY, NY BoxDeserterTrio
*April 29th at Wilkes-Barre, PN BoxDeserterTrio
*April 30th at 2739 Edwin, Detroit, MI, BoxDeserterTrio
*May 1st at 1812 Church St., Detroit, MI, BoxDeserterTrio (Benefit for World Social Forum)
*May 3rd at Church, Portland OR with Tim Duroche, Scott Stobbe and more...!
*May 5th at PSU, Portland, OR (Comprovisation Workshop)
*May 6th at PSU, Portland, OR (Solo Concert)
*May 7th at 1412 Gallery, Seattle, WA (Solos and duos with Amy Denio)
*Working On New Projects
*June 27-July 12th at Prisma Forum, Oaxaca/Mexico City, Mexico (Leading Comprovisation Workshop)
*July 16th and 17th at Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts, Morelia, Mexico (Leading A Comprovisation Workshop, Solo concert)
*July 22nd at Edgetone Summit, San Francisco with Vinny Golia, Rent Romus, Damon Smith and more...
*July 31st at Central Park Summer Stage Festival, NY, NY with Viewsic Expression/Germaul Barnes
*August 1st at St. Mary's Park, The Bronx, NY with Viewsic Expression/Germaul Barnes
*August 13th at X-Initiative with Martha Colburn, NY, NY
*August 14th at AS220 with Martha Colburn, Frank Difficult and more, Providence, RI
*August 18th at Bowery Poetry Club, NY, NY
*September 11th at ExperimentalPianoSeries (EPS) Chicago, IL
*October 10th at Trinity Chamber Concerts Berkeley, CA With Bloom Project
*Working on new projects
*October 18th at Brava! Theater, San Francisco, CA with Martha Colburn
*November 2nd at Mills College, Oakland, CA Solo Piano
*November 5th at San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art San Francisco, CA With Martha Colburn and John Dieterich (Deerhoof)
*November 7th, 8th, 9th Fonoteca Nacional Mexico City with Estamos Ensemble (recording)
*November 10th at Festival Internacional de Puebla Puebla, Mexico with Estamos Ensemble
*November 12th at SF MOMA San Francisco, CA With Martha Colburn, John Dietrich, Jad Fair, Mike Evans...
*November 16th at Anthology Film Archive NY, NY with Martha Colburn
*November 27th, 28th, 29th Gap, France Improvisation Workshops
*November 27th at Centre Municipal Culture et Loisirs, Gap France with
*December 1st at Syncronie Festival Milano, Italy with Duo with Stefano Scodanibbio
*December 2nd at Jam Station Ravenna, Italy Solo
*December 4th at Terminal Macerata, Italy, Solo
*December 5th at AreaSismica Meldola, Italy
*December 6th at Ivan Illich Bologna, Italy
*December 10th at CSO Spartaco Ravenna, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 11th at Menza Pri Koritu Ljubljana, Slovenia With Tsigoti
*December 12th at MKC Koper, Slovenia With Tsigoti
*December 16th at Galleria Da. Co. Terni, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 17th at Spazio 72 Grosseto, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 18th at La Cite Firenze, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 19th at Trok! Milano, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 20th at Arci Aur-ora Piccolo Teatro Bolzano, Italia With Tsigoti
*December 21st - 31st recording 3rd album with Tsigoti
*January 3rd at Teatro Refugio Livorno, Italia Solo Piano
*January19th at Umlaut Berlin, Germany Solo Piano
*January 30th at Rotterdam International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands With Martha Colburn and McCloud Zicmuse

Recent Festivals:
Trasporti Maritimi (Livernon, France) - Tagofest (Massa, Italy) - Strade Blu Festival (Ravenna, Italy) Olympia Festival of Experimental Musics (Olympia, Washington) - Terra Trema (Cherbourg, France) - Bohemian National Home Festival of Jazz and Improvised Musics (Detroit, Michigan) - Big Sur Experimental Music Festival at the Henry Miller Library (Big Sur, California) - Edgetone Summit (San Francisco, California)]]></description>
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