Thomas J. West Music

Throughout my experience as a musician, I have grown through many different kinds of experiences. I began as a child enjoying music performance. In order to remain involved with the kinds of performing groups I enjoyed as a student, I became a music teacher. Gradually over the course of my teaching career, I found myself increasingly interested in teaching m...

Today, on U.S. Independence Day, I find myself pondering "independence" and "freedom" and thought I'd share a few thoughts on that. The fact of the matter is, we are born free and we remain free. Freedom is a universal truth, but we create experiences for ourselves that limit our freedom in many ways for many reasons. Consider the following:

Every once in a while, a piece of art finds its way in front of you that just strikes you to the core. Today is one of those days for me.

While working at my desk, I was listening to recordings from one of my favorite contemporary composers, Eric Whitacre. He made a big splash recently with his

Alright, here's the situation. I bleed music for a living. I have been a computer geek since the age of 5 starting with my first Sears Pong game for the TV. I have been an avid Finale user for over 15 years. I have used Audacity a few times for various simple purposes. I ha...

In a recent Music Education Chat on Twitter, the topic we were discussing was "What is your criteria for selecting great repertoire and weeding out poor repertoire?" In the midst of that chat, the discussion turned to the practice of allowing students to have input i...

This is the first of a series of videos I am creating to upload to youtube. This one features one of my concert band compositions, which can also be found on the Compositions page. In future installm...