Thomas J. West Music

This particular performance is not of the caliber I normally include in the Great Performances series, but the novelty of how it is being performed is worth observing. Walk Off The Earth is an Ontario-based independent contemporary band that specializes in inventive covers of popular songs and their own originals, This particular cover of "Somebody I Used to Know" by Goyte was shared with me on Google Plus. All five members of the band play one acoustic guitar, each taking a piece of the comp...

'Tis the season for holiday flash mobs!

This is a particularly good one. It begins with a solo alto saxophonist playing in the University of Minnesota's Calson School of Management foyer. Singers begin to join in, and then security shows up. And THAT'S when it starts getting interesting!

Well played, Golden Gopher School of Music, well played.

This video was making the rounds today amongst my band director and musician contemporaries on Facebook today. This is so inventive and cool! Leroy Anderson was a master of the pop orchestra number, and this treatment of "Sleigh Ride" is not only rhythmically engaging but harmonically interesting.

The King's Singers are in my top five all-time favorite close harmony vocal groups. This is one of their recent offerings on a DVD entitle "King's Singers Christmas". This performance is stunning and poignant.

I saw the King's Singers in 1994 live, back when long-standing tenor singer Bob Chilcott was still in the group. They perform in the tradition of the madrigal - no amplification in smaller venues that allow their natural, pure voices to fill the hall. It was an amazin...

Close harmony singing is a personal joy of mine - one that I have been actively engaged in on and off for the past 20 years. Over the past three years, I have made a return to contemporary a cappella singing after a long haitus. Coming back to a cappella in the age of Social Media has brought me all sorts of new access to groups and fellow enthusiasts that I have never had before. I mean, seriously - I'm Facebook friends with people like Barry Carl from Rockapella and I'm talking to members o...

Everyone in modern Western culture has heard this music before. Bach's cello prelude in G major is consistently used in the background of television commercials and is often the first cello solo that young cellists the world over ask to learn how to play. It's execution and interpretation have been scrutinized by cellists for hundreds of years, and it is pretty much required learning if you consider yourself a cellist.

This morning, one of my students sent me the link to thi...

The Hot 5 is a dixieland quintet of faculty and alumni from Bringham Young University that performs classic New Orleans-style jazz. This video of the group playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" for a group of cows in rural France is making the rounds on Facebook right now and is quite charming.

This ...

I have a rather large number of incoming saxophonists to my school this year, so I was looking for a YouTube video to post on their class Moodle page. This one is smokin' hot! It was recorded live at Yamaha's Artist Service Center in New York City on October 8, 2005. The performers are the Capitol Quartet. It's a great demonstration of the various common sizes of saxophone, plus for those of us who know be bop, there's a nice little quote in the middle you may recognize.

Those of us who were alive and old enough to understand remember clearly the day of September 11, 2001 and the weeks immediately following the damage. Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the falling of those two gigantic buildings.

One of the defining moments of those early days was President George W. Bush's visi...

I have been a fan of Symphony of Science since discovering it two years ago. While music has always been the central focus of my life, I developed a strong interest in quantum theory, consciousness and the mind, cymatics, and spiritual geometry over the past five years. Symphony of Science is a m...