Thomas Myers Biography

My first musical experience, like that of many other musicians, happened in church. I began imitating our church's organ player the age of five. My feet couldn't quite reach the bass pedals, but I developed a keen interest in the sounds the pipe organ produced. Later that year at Christmas, Santa Claus brought my sister a small 36 key organ, complete with major and minor chord buttons. After usurping the organ from my sister, I began to associate notes with chords, and experimented with combining chords to hear the similarities and common notes. I began listening to classical music, entered music memory contests, and listened to my mother's Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Fats Waller and Tommy Dorsey records.

In the fourth grade, I was given a small plastic song flute. Fascinated with the manner in which you could cover different holes and produce half tones, I began to invent fingerings for sharps and flats, as well as discovering multiple fingerings for notes. I got my first Bundy clarinet at age 10, and I was hooked on wind instruments. In high school, I played Bb clarinet, alto sax, bassoon, oboe, alto and bass clarinet, and tympani. All of the wind instruments had basically the same fingering, and they were available, so I learned to play them all. I joined my first band, The Sound Senders. In high school, I listened to James Brown, the Motown Sound, Chicago, and remained interested in classical music.

At Stanford University, I was exposed to all of the music of the world. Jazz, bebop, Latin rhythms, folk music -- it was all there. I tried to pattern my playing style after Stanley Turrentine, Grover Washington, Jr. and Lenny Pickett, and soon began to develop my own sound and style. After college, I moved to Los Angeles and began playing in local R&B bands, and still perform with some of these same musicians today.

Currently residing in Northern California, I perform regularly with the Jazz group Potential in the Bay Area, and with the R&B band Upward Mobility in Southern California, and, of course, the Jazz/Latin/Classical group PocketWatch in Southern California. I am continuously influenced by and continue to learn from Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane, Sting, Santana, George Howard, Kenny Garrett, Michael Brecker, Branford Marsalis, Stanley Clarke, and the Yellowjackets.

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