The music of David Evan Thomas is praised for its eloquence, lyricism and craft. Critics note the composer’s loving ties to tradition, expressed in a refreshing, contemporary voice. Performers appreciate the clearly executed scores and technical know-how. Listeners respond to the music’s warmth, playfulness and sheer invention.
Honored with a Citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowships (2013, 1992), a Montana Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (1987), and the Möller-A.G.O. Award in Choral Composition, Thomas has received commissions from the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the American Composers Forum and the American Guild of Organists. He has been a resident artist at Wyoming’s Ucross and Brush Creek Arts Foundations, and at California’s Villa Montalvo. He also served residencies at Westminster Presbyterian Church (Minneapolis) and the Cathedral of Saint Paul. Recent honors include the Renée B. Fisher Composer Award and the Welcome Christmas Carol Award from VocalEssence.
David Evan Thomas’s varied catalogue includes music for orchestra and wind ensemble, forty chamber works, keyboard pieces large and small, an opera and an oratorio. Vocal music is particularly prominent, with over a dozen song cycles—on subjects ranging from medieval women troubadours to baseball writings of Donald Hall—and some seventy choral works. Thomas’s music is published by Adlais, ALRY, Augsburg Fortress, Cherry Classics, Classical Vocal Reprints, ECS, Fatrock Ink, Jeanné, MorningStar, North Star, Presser, Subito and VocalEssence Press. Katie T. Moss published the first doctoral dissertation on Thomas’s work, Of Things Hoped For: the Organ Works of David Evan Thomas, at Indiana University in 2019. The organ collection A Time to Dance was published by Augsburg Fortress in 2022. Transformations, featuring pianist Sonja Thompson and mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski, was released in 2023 on the Centaur label. Thomas’s music is also recorded on Innova, Ten Thousand Lakes, Klavier and New World Records.
Thomas’s orchestral music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Gian-Carlo Guerrero and Eiji Oue and the National Orchestral Association, conducted by Jorge Mester. His choral works have been sung by London’s Westminster Cathedral Choir, the Minnesota Chorale, VocalEssence, the National Lutheran Choir, Kantorei and the Rose Ensemble. Thomas chamber works have been played by Gil Shaham, Truls Mørk and Yefim Bronfman; the Minneapolis, Artaria, Lux and Rosalyra String Quartets; the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet; the Debussy Trio, Zeitgeist and many beloved solo performers: singers Karen Clift, Maria Jette, Patricia Kent, Clara Osowski, Vern Sutton, Lawrence Weller, Gregory Wiest and Adriana Zabala; pianists Lydia Artymiw, Mark Bilyeu, John Churchwell, Margo Garrett, Timothy Lovelace, Sonja Thompson and Shannon Wettstein; organists James Biery, Marilyn Biery, Dean Billmeyer, Stephen Self and Katie T. Moss; and instrumentalists David Baldwin, Burt Hara, Erin Keefe and Jeffrey Van. Among recent projects: To Joy, a 14-song cycle for solo quartet and piano duet, and One Fair Summer Eve, commissioned by the Minnesota State Band.
Born in Rochester, New York in 1958, David Evan Thomas grew up as the fourth of five children in a musical family, the son of flutist John Thomas and Marian (Parsons) Thomas. He attended Penfield High School and the Eastman “Prep” Department, graduating with Honors in Trumpet and receiving encouragement in composition from David Russell Williams. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, he studied trumpet and composition and learned the basics of organ playing from Robbe Delcamp. While there, he conducted the Gilbert and Sullivan Guild and sang in the Alice Millar Chapel Choir under Grigg Fountain’s direction. As a master’s degree student at Eastman, he was awarded the Director’s Fellowship; he then taught at Montana State University/Billings through the 1980s. Thomas served as Dominick Argento’s assistant at the University of Minnesota, where he also taught composition and orchestration, receiving the PhD in 1996. Thomas’s teachers have included composers Dominick Argento, Samuel Adler and Alan Stout, and trumpeters Vincent Cichowicz and Richard Jones. He studied further with David Diamond at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and at the Aspen Festival. He pursued piano study as an adult with Stephanie Wendt and Irina Elkina and has participated as a singer in the Tallis Scholars Summer School and as a pianist at the Chamber Music Conference.
David Evan Thomas has had an enduring relationship with the Schubert Club. He served as its first composer-in-residence from 1997 to 2005, penned over 500 program notes for concerts in his twenty years as program annotator, and received the organization’s “An die Musik Award” for outstanding service in 2016. His notes have also appeared in program books for the Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall and the Brevard Festival. In 2018, Thomas was initiated into Sigma Alpha Iota Fraternity as a National Arts Associate by the Minneapolis/Saint Paul Alumnae Chapter. Thomas was a Composer Mentor for Minnesota’s Source Song Festival from 2019-23. He has served as a juror for the National Federation of Music Clubs, the MacPhail Center for Music, and Brush Creek Arts.
David Evan Thomas is a BMI affiliate. He lives in Minneapolis.
