About
What are you working on now?
I am working on an a capella choral piece based on some of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s texts.
Who are you, Mr. Thomson?
I wear many hats, but I am primarily a composer of concert music. I’m also a busy orchestral arranger, usually reimagining diverse styles of popular music for orchestras, most often for l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. I have also composed three musicals and as well as music for film and television. These days, I’m an active orchestral pianist but I also love the art of free improvisation. I’m an occasional conductor, usually for recordings. I have taught privately since I was teenager, usually piano, but also theory and orchestration. I grew up in Toronto but have lived in Montréal since 1995.
What’s a typical day for you?
I awake very early and run on a mountain followed by calisthenics and some yoga. The rest of the day is spent writing notes. If I’m not writing then I’m either reading or rehearsing for a concert. Rinse and repeat the following day.
Who were your mentors?
I was very fortunate. During my childhood in Toronto I had several teachers starting with stern Mrs. Hope, a strict and very conservative piano teacher, who lived next door. After several years she sent me to the Royal Conservatory of Music where I studied piano, theory and counterpoint. I can’t overstate how hardcore these teachers were. Subsequently, I studied with brilliant professors at York University. The ethnomusicologists, Beverly Diamond and Bob Witmer taught me not only how to think but also how to think expansively and critically about this thing we call music in its cultural context. I studied orchestration and semiotics with David Lidov. To this day, memories of my studies with South Indian Carnatic musician, Trichy Sankaran, and pianist/improviser Casey Sokol literally resonate within me. Finally, my closest mentor, the radically pioneering composer, James Tenney, taught me so much about sound, compositional rigour, acoustics, and uncompromising artistic integrity that when I’m stuck on a passage I still ask myself: “what would Jim do here?”
Can you share a few musical highlights?
Since 2006 I have collaborated with Orchestre symphonique de Montréal as a composer and arranger for about fifteen different projects. With this incredible orchestra, I am particularly fond of a rereading of songs of singer/songwriter, Michel Rivard, culminating in an acclaimed studio album. There was a very trippy transformation of “Rhapsody in Blue” conceived for ten pianos and orchestra under the direction of Kent Nagano, featuring jazz pianist, Lorraine Desmarais. For chamber orchestra I composed, arranged and conducted “La Symphonie rapaillé,” a recording based on Gaston Miron’s poetry that was the recipient of a Félix Award. The collaboration with indie band Half Moon Run was as audacious as it was innovative. My 2019 concerto for bass clarinet and orchestra, “Les ailes sur les pas de deux,” featuring André Moisan and conducted by Kent Nagano, was thrilling, particularly given that André and I are both musicians who embrace virtuosity and improvisation. I recently wrote a pretty intense arrangement of Mussorsky’s “Pictures an Exhibition” for the string orchestra Les Violons du Roy and still hold fond memories of composing a very fast, steaming overture for Orchestre Métroplitain under the baton of Yannick Nézet Séguin. Of late, OSM has just recorded “Riopelle Symphonique,” a 75 minute work for orchestra and choir composed for the centenary of Jean-Paul Riopelle in 2023.
As a pianist, there are simply too many memories and too many concerts from which to choose but one inimitable project comes to mind. With the choreographer, Louise Bédard, I spent six months composing a dance score for both a prepared piano and a regular grand piano. Each of the twelve dancers was afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. I played both pianos for the performance and have never played with the level of vulnerability and explosiveness as I did that night.
Any regrets?
A few. I still haven’t played “The Goldberg Variations” in concert. That grates. And I still have yet to find a producer for “The Virgin Courtesan,” a musical I wrote with writer, Frayne McCarthy. That really stings because I think it’s the most beautiful piece of musical theatre yet to have had a run.
Anything you want to say about your music?
I am obsessed with how musical morphology (shape) is perceptible to both the listener and performer be it rhythmic flow, harmonic change, contrapuntal density etc. I am instinctively and unashamedly drawn to melodic beauty and surprises of any type. They usually reveal themselves through contrapuntal play and rhythmic manipulation. For as long as I can remember, the physicality of sound is as significant and plastic to me as material is to a sculptor.
Finally, why do you write music?
As tacky as this sounds, I compulsively search for the mysterious force that links one note to another, one rhythm to another, one timbre to another. But to find it requires very intense mental work, which is, at its core, the detailed construction of a plan (the score) usually arising from an original, inchoate flash. Apart from striking a golf ball flush with a three iron, I know of nothing more rewarding than hearing these notes played by sensitive and ferocious musicians.