Biography
Dr. Thomas Mark Breadon Jr. is a teacher, bassoonist, and composer living in Phoenix, Arizona.
Dr. Breadon is currently the Director of Bands at Arizona School for the Arts where he instructs and performs with four 7-12 grade wind ensembles: Band Foundations, Concert Band, Symphonic Winds, and Chamber Winds. Every ensemble performs 3 concerts a year; the top ensemble, Chamber Winds, performs up to 7 concerts a year, including the Arizona Band and Orchestra Directors Association Fall Band Festival. In addition, he coaches an after school chamber ensemble, the ASA Reed Trio.
Thomas is also adjunct faculty at Glendale Community College where he teaches bassoon and composition lessons, music theory, chamber music, and humanities courses. In addition to teaching traditional face-to-face classes, he has developed two online courses: Survey of American Music and Hip Hop Music and Culture. Over the past two years his private composition students at Glendale Community College have placed 1st and 3rd in the composition section of the MCCCD Artists of Promise Competition and the chamber music ensemble he coaches “Table For Five” placed third in MCCCD Artists of Promise Competition.
Previously, 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. In addition, he taught general music for grades 3-5 at Cicero Preparatory Academy.
In 2016 he became a member of both the Mill Ave Chamber Players and the West Valley Symphony Orchestra. The Mill Ave Chamber Players is a professional chamber music ensemble based in Phoenix that annually performs over 50 concerts and 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
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. This past summer, MACP recorded Thomas’s original compositions for woodwind quintet and narrator based on the universal tales of select Aesop’s Fables.
In June 2018, the Mill Ave Chamber Players will be recording his composition Impressions for Wind Quintet which will be released along with compositions by world renowned composers John Steinmetz and Kerry Turner.
Thomas currently has seven compositions published; two with Imagine Music Publishing and five through his own Breadon Music Publishing. In 2014 Thomas had an article published in the International Double Reed Society Journal The Double Reed titled “Two Studies on Improvisation and Brain Function.” His dissertation titled “The Pedagogical Use of Improvisation in Western Art Music” was published in 2016; it addresses the reasons why improvisation has been excluded in the study of Western Art Music, why we should reinstate the use of improvisation in our schools, and practical methods for introducing improvisation into personal practicing and private lessons. In 2015 he was awarded the Creation Project Grant to produce a project that was an amalgamation of improvised dance, painting, spoken-word poetry, interactive conductive technologies, and music that explored the Creation Project Theme: the immensity, complexity, and diversity of the natural world; a tribute to the act of creation and genius.
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.