| Profile: Tom Heasley | |
 | Tom Heasley's uniquely expressive musical voice is wedded to a most unlikely partner - the tuba. At the forefront of those developing a new identity for the tuba, Heasley is a sonic explorer whose distinctive sound sculptures are highly evocative of mood and atmosphere. His evolving sonic toolbox contains an ever-growing stockpile of acoustic and electronic gadgets. With it, Heasley has burst the seams of traditional tuba playing. After years of contributing his talents to the music of others, Heasley now performs primarily as a solo improvising composer. |
| In an earlier incarnation, Tom Heasley logged a two-year stint with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra (West Coast Unit). In recent years, he has performed a wide variety of new, experimental, jazz, rock and improvisational music. He has given West Coast and World premieres of works by Lois V Vierk, Anne LeBaron, Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros and Jonathan Harvey. Composers Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran and Steve Lacy have written for him. At the same time, he has performed with the Deep Listening Band, marched in Chinese funeral bands, played with symphonies and chamber ensembles, oom-pa'd in the park with concert bands, rocked on with rock bands, recorded TV and film music. All the while, his playing style was undergoing a deep and dramatic evolution. | ||
| Recently, Tom Heasley has released a solo album on the Hypnos label. Where The Earth Meets The Sky features four lengthy tracks of live studio improvisations. The tones from Heasley's tuba are processed and sonically manipulated to produce layers of deep space drones. The album is very cerebral and introspective and quite representative of what Heasley does live. |  | |
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Review: Where the Earth Meets the Sky by Tom Heasley
Everything has been given the ambient treatment, from Madonna to Bach, Tibetan monks to accordions. But the tuba? It's not that far-fetched an idea. Years ago, Stuart Dempster took his trombone into a cathedral and let it ring out in long echoes. Heasley's cathedral is digital, as he runs his horn through long delays, reverb and loops. No doubt helped out by engineer Robert Rich, a master of sonic sound shifting, Heasley sends his tuba deep and low, stacking up a brass choir that moves like a dreadnought in space. In fact, on "Ground Zero," after the opening notes, it doesn't sound like a tuba at all, but like a whale, calling out across an ocean, gathering its echoing brethren in some kind of cosmic harmony. "Western Sky" has more of a conventional tuba sound, but again, playing in sustained notes, Heasley gets audio hallucinations going, not unlike LaMonte Young's "Well-Tuned Piano." If only John Philip Sousa were alive to hear it, marching music might be different today. John Diliberto - PULSE September 2001 | ||
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Review: Where the Earth Meets the Sky by Tom Heasley
Ambient tuba? It's an odd combination of source and style, but one that works surprisingly well. Despite clear influence from Pauline Oliveros's "Deep Listening" projects, (Stuart Dempster's trombone and didgeridoo work is an obvious precedent) Heasley's submerged melodies move quicker than Oliveros's, while maintaining a solemn, meditative pace. Over the course of the CD's four long tracks, Heasley focuses on making subtle changes in texture and building harmonic layers from loops of echoed horn. "Ground Zero" opens the CD with a definitive bass burst, which transforms into soft curtains of sound, smoothly parting to reveal other surfaces beneath, rarely belying their origins at a brass mouthpiece. "Monterey Bay" sounds eerily like a musically-trained whale dueting with a lighthouse. Heasley's occasional harmonic singing serves to highlight melodies inherent in the tuba's complex overtones, and play around them at the same time. Beautifully recorded by Robert Rich, this CD transcends the curiosity factor of its odd instrumentation, and stands as a strong meditative statement, immersing the listener so deeply, that one never thinks of an oompah band. Jeff Towne - NEW AGE VOICE October 2001 | ||
 Tom Heasley live on STAR'S END | Tom Heasley performed at the 15 September 2001 Gathering in Philadelphia. The concert was held in the church sanctuary of St. Mary's Hamilton Village on the Penn campus. Also appearing was Spectral Voices. Access images and reviews of the concert at: http://www.thegatherings.org
. Following The Gathering, Tom Heasley played live on the 09.16.01 broadcast of STAR'S END. The on-air concert featured Heasley's extended tuba tones sustained into infinity by signal processing equipment. The music continued for about 45 minutes, taking the listener well into the drone zone. |  Tom Heasley live on STAR'S END |
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