Hello, I am Thomas Patteson (b. 1981), a writer, teacher, and musician who lives in Philadelphia. My primary areas of interest are:

• Sound technology and musical instruments (explored in my book Instruments for New Music and the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments, a website and soon-to-be book!)
• The history of improvisation, which I'm pursuing through a translation of Ernst Ferand's 1938 book Improvisation in Music
• Musical and altered states of consciousness (research project working title: Music and Mind at Large); I'll also be teaching a course at the University of Pennsylvania called "Music and the Exploration of Consciousness" in the fall of 2025

Some things I've done:
From 2013 to 2023, I was a member of the Musical Studies faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music, where I taught 19th- and 20th-century music history. I am the author of the book Instruments for New Music (University of California Press, 2016), a study of experimental sound technologies in Germany in the early 20th century. My translations of texts by Theodor Adorno and Carl Dahlhaus appeared in the Oxford Handbook of Timbre (2021). Online writing projects include Possible Music (2023-) and the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments (2013-). In 2023, I co-founded (with Aaron Pond) People's Music Supply, an artist-led platform for creative improvised music and community-building. I've also worked with Philadelphia-based presenting organizations such as <fidget> and Bowerbird, where I helped launch the Arcana New Music Ensemble in 2016.