McDonas, Thollem

Racing The Sun Chasing The Sun

Label: Creative Sources Country: Portugal

"When one listens to Thollem McDonas' keen-scented navigations of harmonic seas, every chord or flurry coming from his piano transports right back to a past time where learning to actually play an instrument was not an option if you wanted to become a musician. "Racing The Sun, Chasing The Sun" is wonderfully complicated - you could well get seasick if trying to thoroughly follow those monstrous digital precognitions - yet it has that talkative contrapuntal hyperalimentation, typical of Thollem's most enthralling playing, which will force your body and soul to become a small part of it.

Fecundating those silences that still linger in his music every once in a while, this passionate artist mixes reflection and effervescence - often in the very same moment - to establish his unique citizenhood in a one-man universe amidst the frazzled specimens of "free-thinkers-once-corporate-today" musicians who carry on despite the fact they're without a clue of what they're doing since years.

Instead, Thollem McDonas is a justicer of the worn-out, his instrument a magic machine of rejuvenation of a vocabulary which can still be redintegrated in a fantasy world where we can go astray without ever feeling an ounce of fear. For this reason only, we all should thank him."-Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

"Thollem Mcdonas, pianist/vocalist/composer/improviser, recipient of the 2006 National Endowment of the Arts Meet The Composer grant, was born Feb. 23, 1967 in the San Francisco Bay Area of Irish and Cherokee descent. He is touring perpetually, the previous year in Europe, currently in the U.S. He began his musical training as a young child rigorously studying the keyboard repertoire from the renaissance to the 20th century. After graduating with degrees in both piano performance and composition he chose to become homeless for several years, opting to wander and live out of a backpack, rather than pursue a career as a concert pianist with a suit and tie. It is because of these dichotomies and rich, wildly disparate experiences that his music is so dynamic and appeals to such a wide variety of audiences.

His travels as a performer have covered much of the North American continent and Europe. He has performed extensively as a soloist as well with groups. He is a founding member of several innovative ensembles, and is responsible, in full or in part, for many albums of original music, with both Pax Recordings and Edgetone Records, as well as some self released. In the past year he has toured Italy and logged 13,000 miles on the road throughout America. After the release of three albums in 2005, he is planning seven more this coming year."-Thollem Mcdonas website

Currently Thollem primarily plays his own comprovisations which he calls post-classical circus punk world jazz free music, for people and everyone else. His music whispers/screams, "there are as many worlds in a life as there are lives in the world".