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  • Mr Tom O'Halloran at ECU's Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts

    Mr Tom O'Halloran

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Mr Tom O'Halloran

Tom is the Course Coordinator of Jazz Performance at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

Current teaching

Tom oversees both the academic and student performance programs, including curating the corresponding jazz visiting artist program.

  • MUS1342-MUS3346 - Ensemble Studies: Big Band
  • MUS3345-MUS3346 - Creative Composition and Arranging
  • MUS2383 - Jazz and Contemporary Musicianship 3 (Unit Coordinator) - Piano skills
  • MUS2384 - Jazz and Contemporary Musicianship 4 (Unit Coordinator) - Piano skills
  • MUS4330 - Music Philosophy and Research (Unit Coordinator and Lecturer)
  • MUS4565 - Music Technology for Performance (Unit Coordinator and Lecturer)

Background

Tom O'Halloran is an award-winning jazz pianist, commissioned composer, enthusiastic conductor and jazz educator. Tom leads his own original jazz piano trio outfit, conducts orchestras from time to time, composes experimental music, and plays analogue synthesizers.

In 2022 he was at a grand piano onstage at His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth, where he improvised a live score each night for the Black Swan Theatre Company's production of The Glass Menagerie (by Tennessee Williams).

His recent 2021 composition My Voice, A Trigger For Change was written for the large forces of Big Band and Jazz Vocal Choir. 2021 also saw Tom release two new albums featured on ABC Jazz; Axiom with his longstanding piano trio and TLC with his jazz organ trio.

In 2017 Tom was commissioned to compose and perform music for the IN-SITU 2017 season; and developed Passage, music for a site-specific dance work. In 2016 he released Now Noise, and also received an Australia Council grant to compose and develop the work. The album won Jazz Work of the Year at the 2017 APRA Art Music Awards.

Tom has toured Australia many times, and has played large venues like the Sydney Opera House and the Promethean Theatre (Adelaide), and also the best jazz clubs in the country – including 505, The Basement (Sydney), Bennett’s Lane and Paris Cat (Melbourne), and The Ellington Jazz Club (Perth).

He has appeared with high caliber jazz artists from the USA including bassist Robert Hurst, Walter Smith III and Peter Bernstein. Tom has appeared overseas at the 2017 IP Jazz Festival in Malaysia, the Houston International Jazz Festival, the IAJE festival in New York, Villa Celimontana in Italy, Dubai, UAE and club dates in New Zealand.

He has composed two multi-piano pieces; Dissolve, for two pianos, and Drumkit (for six pianos). These explored his interest in musical interruption and chromatic saturation, synthesised with jazz interaction and improvisation.

Professional associations

  • 2010 - present - Perth Jazz Society, PIJF (Member)
  • 2010 - present - Jazz Coordination Association of WA, JCAWA (Member)

Awards and recognition

  • Jazz Work of the Year, 2017 APRA Art Music Awards
  • 2016 Best Keys and Synth Artist, West Australian Music Industry Award (WAM)
  • 2014 Best Jazz Artist, West Australian Music Industry Award (WAM)
  • 2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Limelight Magazine award for best jazz achievement
  • 2011 Freedman Foundation Jazz Fellowship, Sydney Opera House (finalist)

Research areas and interests

  • Integrating concepts from modernism within jazz improvisation and composition
  • Hybridity within jazz works
  • Multi-disciplined approaches to composition and improvisation
  • Technology and moving image within contemporary jazz
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