Thomas Patteson (b. 1981) is a scholar and musician who specializes in music since 1900, and in particular the electronic, experimental, and improvised practices of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Thomas is Professor of Music History at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he has been a member of the faculty since 2013. He has studied at New College of Florida, the University of Cologne, and the University of Pennsylvania.
He is the author of Instruments for New Music (University of California Press, 2016), a history of the musical, social, and political ramifications of experimental sound technologies developed in Germany during the Weimar Republic. His book received the 2017 Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society, which recognizes "a musicological book of exceptional merit produced by a scholar in the early stages of their career."
Thomas' current research project explores radical alternatives to the standard model of composition in 20th-century music—from algorithms to collective improvisation—and seeks to illuminate these tendencies with the help of concepts drawn from cybernetics, systems theory, and post-human aesthetics.
An avid supporter of the digital humanities, Thomas was the author of the music blog Acousmata (2009-2013) and is co-curator of the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments, an online archive of speculative organology. His other interests include alternative pedagogies, the history of consciousness, and the radical reconstruction of society.
Beyond his scholarly work, Thomas is actively involved in the Philadelphia music scene. He is an associate curator at Bowerbird, where he helped launch the Arcana New Music Ensemble in 2016, and has also collaborated extensively with the experimental art platform <fidget>, where he has served on the Board of Directors since 2019. As a musician, Thomas plays modular synthesizer in a duo with vocalist Aaron Pond and on acoustic instruments in the improvising group Borbs.
Thomas is a proud union member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 09608, United Academics of Philadelphia.
He is the author of Instruments for New Music (University of California Press, 2016), a history of the musical, social, and political ramifications of experimental sound technologies developed in Germany during the Weimar Republic. His book received the 2017 Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society, which recognizes "a musicological book of exceptional merit produced by a scholar in the early stages of their career."
Thomas' current research project explores radical alternatives to the standard model of composition in 20th-century music—from algorithms to collective improvisation—and seeks to illuminate these tendencies with the help of concepts drawn from cybernetics, systems theory, and post-human aesthetics.
An avid supporter of the digital humanities, Thomas was the author of the music blog Acousmata (2009-2013) and is co-curator of the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments, an online archive of speculative organology. His other interests include alternative pedagogies, the history of consciousness, and the radical reconstruction of society.
Beyond his scholarly work, Thomas is actively involved in the Philadelphia music scene. He is an associate curator at Bowerbird, where he helped launch the Arcana New Music Ensemble in 2016, and has also collaborated extensively with the experimental art platform <fidget>, where he has served on the Board of Directors since 2019. As a musician, Thomas plays modular synthesizer in a duo with vocalist Aaron Pond and on acoustic instruments in the improvising group Borbs.
Thomas is a proud union member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 09608, United Academics of Philadelphia.
Photo by Jessica Brown
