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, as explored in my book Instruments for New Music (University of California Press, 2016) and the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments, a website and soon-to-be book (to be published by Reaktion Books in 2026)
• The history of improvisation in European music (English translation of Ernst Ferand's 1938 book Improvisation in Music, to be published by Routledge)
• 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

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. 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.