Biography

*Thomas Goss's credits as a composer include music written for dance, film, television, and the concert stage. His works have been commissioned and premiered by such groups as Marin Symphony, Earplay, Onyx String Quartet, and the San Francisco Symphony Chamber Ensemble, and he has created concerto repertoire for soloists such as violist Linda Ghidossi-DeLuca and erhuist Xiaofeng Zhang.
*

Goss is involved in ongoing residencies with several artistic organizations. With the Santa Rosa Symphony Young People's Chamber Orchestra, his 4-year residency has produced a body of new work for string orchestra. As composer/orchestrator for the Punk Rock Orchestra, Goss has arranged punk rock for orchestra, transformed classics into punk anthems, and is helping to develop a punk opera. Recently retired from the position of resident composer for Moving Arts Dance Collective, his output included collaborations with choreographers Charles Anderson, Robert Moses, and Anandha Ray.

*As an educator, Thomas Goss's activites are international in scope, with appearances as mentor and guest lecturer at Brown University, San Francisco Conservatory's preparatory program, and at the Composers' Association of New Zealand's Young Composers Workshop at the Nelson School of Music in New Zealand. He helped to create the successful Composer-in-the-Schools program at School of the Arts and Lowell High School in San Francisco, now in its seventh year. "Tane and the Kiwi," his tone poem for narrator and orchestra, was written in collaboration with noted children's entertainer Jennifer Moss, and premiered by Moss with the Auckland Philharmonia in several performances of the "Kiwi Kapers" series, which teaches children about both music and ecology.
 

In promoting the cause and awareness of contemporary music, Goss has participated in the commissioning and presentation of hundreds of works by American composers, particularly in Northern California as a director of New Release Alliance and as a member of the steering committee of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the American Composers Forum. Goss is a well-known and prolific commentator on new music and the West Coast classical music scene. His reviews, interviews and observations have appeared regularly in the journals Sounding Board, 20th/21st Century Music, and San Francisco Classical Voice.

 

Thomas Goss is an autodidact who counts Drs. Richard Radford, Laurence Clarke, and Victoria Harris as mentors. He lives in New Zealand with his wife Erica and one unappreciative cat. Goss is a member of ASCAP, and is published by Tiritiri Matangi Music.


I I I I I I
I I I I I

 

website by chris watson