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This week on Mandolin Mondays we have 10 string mandolin player Tom Wright with us, carving up a fun medley of "Big Yellow Taxi" and "La Bamba" on his Thomas Buchanan mandolin.



Tom grew up in Washington, D.C. listening to classical music and studying violin. The creative explosion of the sixties caught his ear and he learned guitar and the songs of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Frank Zappa, and the other seminal pop artists of the day. Also happening then were John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and by the late sixties the revolutionary Weather Report of Joe Zawinul. With these influences to inspire him he played for ten years in the experimental rock group, Grits. He joined the Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra as principal viola in 1980, and moved to Chicago after joining the Chicago Symphony in 1981.

While there, he worked on jazz violin and viola, releasing three CDs, two with jazz fiddler Zach Brock –Self-produced “Common Ground” (RedBelly Records), and Delmark Records’ “High Voltage”. Some of the sidemen joined him for his self-produced “Destination”. The experience carried into mandolin, which Tom began serious work on for a performance of “Otello” under Ricardo Muti.

Discovering the 10-string mandolin made viola less appealing, and with enough years to qualify, Tom took retirement and ended up back home in Montgomery County. Since then he has been playing both acoustic and electric mandolin. A couple of years in Paul Pieper’s Jazz Workshop and many English and contra folk dance gigs made him ready for revisiting his “Destination” project, replacing the viola tracks with electric mandolin, titling it “Tailwind”. Following that he recorded a solo acoustic album of classical, choro, and other material, for the CD “5 x 2”. Check these records out here: https://tomwright1.bandcamp.com/

Be sure to connect with Tom at the following links below for more information about his music:

http://www.twtunes.com/
https://tomwright1.bandcamp.com/

And as always, tune in next week for more Mandolin Mondays! Until then...

Happy Picking!
David