Community Concerts at First: Tom Cleary, Jazz Piano

Community Concerts at First presents jazz pianist Tom Cleary in our final concert of the year.

The Sunday afternoon concert will feature piano music by Vermont jazz composers (James Harvey, Paul Asbell, Brian McCarthy, Ellen Powell and Lar Duggan) and sacred tunes by Duke Ellington. Come out to enjoy one of Vermont’s finest jazz musicians and raise funds for the Essex Community Justice Center!

Tom Cleary studied jazz performance at Hampshire College, where his teachers included Yusef Lateef and Archie Shepp, and music education and classical piano performance the University of Vermont, where his teachers included Sylvia Parker and Elizabeth Metcalfe. As a pianist and keyboardist he has had extended collaborations with artists including Phish bassist Mike Gordon (with whom he did a number of tours between 2008 and 2014), James Harvey, Ray Vega, Patricia Julien, and Jamie Masefield. His collaboration with his wife, vocalist and songwriter Amber deLaurentis, in the jazz quartet Birdcode can be heard on the album You Are Here which was released in 2019 and features a number of his original tunes. His work as an arranger and keyboard player can be heard on the albums Siempre Salsa and Salsa Nortena by Rick Davies and Jazzismo, deLaurentis' solo albums Innocent Road and Hey Sadie and most recently Burmese Panther by guitarist/composer Paul Asbell. He has accompanied artists including Clark Terry, Lester Bowie, Fontella Bass, Ernie Watts, Chris Vidala, Pete Yellin, Max Weinberg, Judi Silvano, Joe Lovano, Joan Rivers and Steve Earle. As a composer, his work has been commissioned and recorded by groups including Social Band, Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble and the Saint Michael's College Fine Arts Department. The musical Mill Girls, a collaboration with director/playwright Peter Harrigan for which he composed and compiled the score, was first performed in 2017 at Saint Michael's College and was revived in an online production recorded and edited between 2020 and 2022 and now available on YouTube. He has also musical directed many shows for UVM Theater and Saint Michael's Playhouse including Anything Goes, Spamalot, Young Frankenstein and The Threepenny Opera. He teaches in the jazz studies program of the UVM Music Department, the Flynn Arts jazz program and his home studio; please visit https://soundcloud.com/bird-code and blog.uvm.edu/tgcleary.