Tobin's Music

Below you'll find a listing of some of the music I've delved into including links to CDs and mp3s.
Please check out my RECORDINGS and BIO pages.

Music has come in eras with me. In order, they each became my obsession: folk, classical, musical theatre, jazz, progressive rock, New Age. I now enjoy combining them in innovative ways. My latest jazz CD, Rain Bather, won Album of the Year (2009) and is feature on JazzRadiodc.com. My current project, The Muller's Wheel (CDBaby) is a collaborative effort between myself and saxophonist Woody Mankowski, resulting in 14 totally hip tunes, and was so much fun, we are already planning our second project.

As a teen, it was my Folk Rock Era, when theater was dead and conversations dangled. I find myself going back to variations of folk music often. A Bit Of Light (CDBaby) is an example. After discovering hard rock, and especially progressive rock, I had a Prog Era, but only as a listener, until I turned 50 and found others who wanted to make retro-future music, forming Audiocracy.

I began writing plays early on and composed background music for them. I began liking the scores more than the scripts. So I began emphasizing instrumentals. In my 20s, I wrote mainly classical compositions, symphonies and ballets, with a few folk songs mixed in, my Classical Era. (Also, I loved holding a baton in my youth.) Almost all of it is lost to antiquity.

Combining my playwriting and music seemed a natural next step. I spent the next 15 years writing musical dramas, my onging Musical Theatre Era.

But I've always loved jazz, as well as Chopin and Debussey. I longed to meld the three, create a unique sound that pleased an inner audience of ghosts and aspiration. My solo piano style began in the New Age school, before we called it New Age. (I don't think any of us were comfortable with that label, at least not for more than a few months.) I never recorded any solo piano until my wife, who hears me play more than anyone else, said aloud that it was what I did best. Kind of an antodote to all my other collaborative efforts. I still have enough new ideas to keep me happy. (My Solo Piano Era continues to this day, expressions of solitude, as do my Jazz and Prog Eras, expressions of evolving collaborations.)

There have been some unexpected moments, like when I was able to contributue a song for the 1986 rededication of the Statue of Liberty, or when I got a call in 1992 to perform my environmental musical at the United Nations.

Some of my best music was never written down, since it came to mind right before falling asleep. Or was played while in an unconscious daze. But I keep writing, in case I stumble upon something I think is worth sharing.

Member: ASCAP, Dramatists Guild (NYC). Click here to listen to a sampling of Tobin's music: Music Player. Also: CDBaby.com.