Performing in Berkeley with Grosse Abfahrt (photo by Michael Zelner)
“An acknowledged innovator in the use of extended split-tone techniques and multiphonics on trumpet, Djll comes across on stage as something of a trickster, a canny manipulator of sounds-you-never-expected-to-hear-on-a-trumpet, a magician who uses valves and breath rather than smoke and mirrors.” - JazzCorner.com
Current and recent projects include:
Grosse Abfahrt with Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, John Shiurba, Matt Ingalls + guests
Quartet with Tim Perkis, Matt Ingalls and Scott Walton
Space Junk jazz trio with Jordan Glenn and Scott Brown
Beauty School with Jacob Felix Heule and Matt Chandler
Dynosoar brass and gongs sound sculptures with Ron Heglin and Karen Stackpole
INTERMINACY John Cage tribute with Tim Perkis
Mockracy: co-operative orchestra, actors, and maxed media
Tony Passarell’s Thin Air Orchestra
All Tomorrow’s Zombies: structured noise with Tim Perkis & Gino Robair
Gino Robair’s I, Norton
sfSound Group, led by Matt Ingalls
Tom Djll studied music at Berklee School of Music, the Colorado College, the Creative Music Studio, and Mills College with Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Karl Berger, Lester Bowie, Leo Smith, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran, and many others. He is the recipient of a Masters degree from Mills College in Electronic Media as well as a “Deeploma” from the Deep Listening Organization, and was awarded the Paul Merritt Henry Prize for Composition while at Mills. Tom has led improvising workshops and in 2004 completed a monthlong residency at Mills College, focusing on extended techniques. In 2007 Tom was featured in the film Noisy People, a document of the San Francisco Bay Area experimental music scene. 2003 and 2008 saw stagings of Mockracy, for co-operative orchestra, actors, electronics and live video.
Tom has spent over twenty years developing the trumpet’s wide sonic array of extended techniques. His musical language incorporates complex noises and gritty, unheard textures from electronica into melodic gestures and building asymmetrical formal structures. Tom has made a lifelong study of the art of improvised music, and has been giving audiences a hard time since the first Reagan administration. He has performed with Annette Krebs, Gianni Gebbia, John Butcher, Steve Adams, Tom Nunn, Roscoe Mitchell, Eugene Chadbourne, Natsuki Tamura, MKM, Biggi Vinkeloe, Frank Gratkowski, Lê Quan Ninh, Chris Brown, Ignaz Schick, Fred Frith, The Splatter Trio, Gail Brand, Wolfgang Fuchs, William Winant, Toshi Makihara, Jon Raskin, Phillip Greenlief, Pauline Oliveros, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, nmperign, Jack Wright, Miya Masaoka, Luc Houtkamp, Tatsuya Nakatani, and many more who asked that their names be withheld.
Tom appears on recordings on the labels Emanem, Tzadik, Creative Sources, Rastascan, Spring Garden, Limited sEdition, Artifact, and his own Soul On Rice imprint. Tom also writes about music for The Wire, Signal To Noise, Musicworks, DRUM!, and online publications Sequenza 21, One Final Note and Bagatellen.
An alternate history of Djll, from a trumpet’s POV.
Tom Djll streaming at Bandcamp
Download PDFs (current as of December, 2012):
Tom Djll Biography
Discography
List of gigs
List of collaborators
List of compositions
List of published writings