Thomas L. Beyer, a technologist, consultant, educator, engineer, composer, instrument builder and percussionist, studied Classical Percussion, with Paul Price, and Twentieth Century Composers at Manhattan School of Music in the late 60s, and continued Jazz and Ethnic music studies with percussion masters, Fredrick Waits, Eddie Blackwell, Jack DeJohnette, Billy Hart and Guillermo Franco. He received his Masters of Composition from NYU, studying with Dinu Ghezzo and Justin Dello Joio. He continues his lifelong quest for knowledge to gain a mastery of how to produce, capture and control sounds.
At fourteen he started playing drums professionally with a big band and smaller ensebles. By 20 he had performed in all of the major concert halls in NYC and he has performed extensively in the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Korea, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland to name a few. His compositions, in many genres, ranging from solos to huge multimedia extravaganzas have been performed in many venues and festivals in Europe, Asia as well as all across the United States. He started audio engineering for major acts while still in college, and began using video in his compositions and performances around that same time, which quickly developed into fully blown multimedia performances.
Tom has taught since an early age and joined the adjunct faculty at New York University in 1999, where he was also the Chief Systems Engineer for the Music Technology Program and the Network Administrator for the Department of Music &Performing Arts Professions. In these capacities he was technical director for over 70 interactive multimedia productions as well as numerous festivals including NIME, and the bi-annual NYU Music Technology Interactive Arts Festival. He oversaw the design and construction of the $6.8 million dollar DOLAN Recording and Research Studios, that is a high tech complex for sound engineering, computer music, audio-visual production and post-production, mastering, scoring for film and multimedia, audio for games, software development, and multimedia production, which was praised by Mix Magazine as “one of the most technically advanced audio teaching facilities in the United States.” He was also instrumental in specification and design of the performance and research facilities at the NYU Abu Dhabi campus, the Third Street North Jazz and Piano Studies studios, offices and classrooms, and the Provincetown Playhouse. The most recent project was designing and finishing a 50 Dante speaker Immersive Audio Video Lab and recording studio.
Beyer has taught and continues to teach in a broad range of Music Technology areas including Analog Synthesis, Audio for Video, Electronics, Recording, Electronic Music Performance, Interactive Software, & System Design. He has performed with, taught for and with Morton Subotnick, and he has been a mentor to generations of technologists, percussionists and even apprentices in instrument building.
He was a member of the New York University Composers Ensemble, a founding member of The La Mama Experimental Theater Company, NYU IMPACT, which was The Interactive Multimedia Performing Arts Collaborative Technology Workshop that ran eleven summers, and the iCIA, International Composers and Interactive Artist, of which he was the President. He performs as a percussionist regularly around New York, does engineering and sound design as well as composing for Internet and multimedia projects. He started teaching for and assumed the role of Technical Director for the Electronic Music Foundation, was on the board of directors of Ear To The Earth and was the director of the Electronic Music Program at The County College of Morris from 2000 – 2004.