Biography
Dr. Thomas Mark Breadon Jr. is a teacher, bassoonist, and composer living in Phoenix, Arizona. He is currently the Band Director at Arizona School for the Arts, and a composer and performer with the ensembles Mill Ave Chamber Players and Notes and Nightcaps.
Dr. Breadon completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts at Arizona State University in December of 2015 and holds Masters degrees in Bassoon Performance and Music Theory from The University of Akron, as well as a Bachelors in Music Performance from Morehead State University.
Performance and Composition
In 2016, Thomas became a member of the Mill Ave Chamber Players, a professional chamber music ensemble based in Phoenix that was nominated for both the city of Phoenix Mayor's Arts Award in 2016 and 2017 and the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award in 2017. His first year with the ensemble concluded with recording the ensemble's second album WHAT THE BIRDS SAID in which the Mill Ave Chamber Players were joined by The Pacific Arts Wind Quintet to record the music of John Steinmetz.
In 2018, MACP recorded Thomas’s original compositions for woodwind quintet and narrator based on the universal tales of select Aesop’s Fables. The recordings were paired with paintings by Tifa Holman to create videos that are available on Youtube.
Thomas's composition Impressions for Wind Quintet was recorded and paired alongside compositions by composers Robert V. Springer, John Steinmetz, and Kerry Turner for the Mill Ave Chamber Players third album Impressions which was released in 2018.
In 2020, Thomas completed a new set of stories set to music: North American Folktales. The collection of five folktales for narrator and wind quintet was recorded in 2021 and set to video alongside paintings from Tifa Holman in 2023.
Education
Since 2020, Dr. Breadon has been a faculty member of Arizona School for the Arts in downtown Phoenix, AZ. At ASA, Thomas is the Director of Bands, where he instructs and performs with eight separate concert bands, and is the faculty mentor in the Performing Arts College Preparatory Program, a course designed to support students going into the performing arts in the rigid and detailed college application and preparation process.
From 2015 to 2020, Thomas was adjunct faculty at Glendale Community College where he taught bassoon and composition lessons, music theory, chamber music, and humanities courses. In addition to teaching traditional face-to-face classes, he developed two online courses: Survey of American Music and Hip Hop Music and Culture.
From 2015 to 2019, Thomas taught private and group bassoon lessons at Rosie’s House, a non-profit organization that provides free music instruction and instruments to underserved students in Phoenix, Arizona.