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The American tenor and conductor, Jeffrey Thomas, was educated at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and the Juilliard School of Music, with further studies in English literature at Cambridge University.
Jeffrey Thomas is Artistic and Music Director of the American Bach Soloists and the American Classical Soloists, with whom he has directed and conducted recordings of more than 25 cantatas, the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232), the Musical Offering, motets, chamber music, and works by Heinrich Schütz, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Antonio Vivaldi, Haydn, and L.v. Beethoven. He has appeared also as soloist with most major USA symphonies and Baroque orchestras. He has collaborated with many noted conductors including Herbert Blomstedt, Edo de Waart, Christopher Hogwood, Ton Koopman, Gustav Leonhardt, Seiji Ozawa, Roger Norrington, Andrew Parrott, Jordi Savall, Robert Shaw, and David Zinman; with Boston Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Houston Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra; with the Vienna Symphony and New Japan Philharmonic; with virtually every American Baroque orchestra; and in Austria, England, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Mexico. He has recently performed at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, Boston Early Music Festival, Bethlehem Bach Festival, Göttingen Festival, Tage Alte Musik Festival in Regensburg, E. Nakamichi Baroque Festival in Los Angeles, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. Cited by the Wall Street Journal as "a superstar among oratorio tenors".
Jeffrey Thomas’ extensive discography of vocal music includes dozens of recordings of major works for Decca, EMI, Erato, Koch International Classics, Denon, Harmonia Mundi, Smithsonian, Newport Classics, and Arabesque.
Jeffrey Thomas is an avid exponent of contemporary music, and has premiered song cycles of several new composers, including two cycles written especially for him. He has performed Lieder recitals at the Smithsonian, song recitals at various universities, and appears with his own vocal chamber music ensemble, "L’Aria Viva!". Mr. Thomas made his operatic debut at the 1981 Spoleto USA Festival. For the next three years, he was a member of the San Francisco Opera, and was awarded one of the company’s prestigious Adler Fellowships. He made his first European appearance at the Landestheater in Innsbruck in 1983, then sang the leading role of Renaud in Gluck’s Armide at the Opera Lirico in Bologna.
Jeffrey Thomas has taught at the Amherst Early Music, San Francisco Early Music Society, and Southern Utah Early Music Workshops, presented master classes at the New England Conservatory of Music, SUNY at Buffalo, Swarthmore College, and Washington University, been on the faculty of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and was artist-in-residence at the University of California, where he is now a member of the faculty and director of choral ensembles at the U.C. Davis Campus, and an instructor at the Berkeley campus. |
