The TJ Thompson Trio

TJ Thompson has been working as a jazz pianist, composer, conductor, and educator for the last twenty-six years throughout the Midwest, New Orleans, New York, and New England. In 2018, his second album of original music Take Two: The Sounds of Playing won Jazz Artist of the Year by the International Music and Entertainment Association. In 2000, He performed with Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, and as a result was a featured artist on Branford Marsalis’ NPR show, Jazz Set. In 1998 he recorded and produced Thompson Trio Take One, receiving good reviews from Goldmine and Cadence magazines. A student of both Henry Butler and George Cables, he has opened for and worked with such artists as Henry Butler, Mel Torme, Ed Thigpen, Nate Davis, Dave Liebman, and Koko Taylor as well as being a featured soloist on the Morgan Powell Jazz Album. He has a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies from Eastern Illinois University, a Master of Music in Composition from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana, and a Master of Education from Columbia University. He studied baton technique from Maestro Vincent LaSelva at the Juilliard Evening Division. From 2009-2014, he worked for the College Board and ETS as a member of the development committee and question leader of the AP Music Theory Exam. He taught at St. Johnsbury Academy and Johnson State College in Vermont from 1997-2000 and since has been the instrumental music instructor at the Taft School, in Watertown, Connecticut, where he resides with his wife, two daughters, and three cats.

Watertown, CT