Thollem's keyboard flights unleash cascades of notes of seemingly impossible
velocity and no matter where he goes tonally, it always seems right, fresh and
satisfying. He should be on everyone's listening list who appreciates great
piano music.  As an improviser, he inhabits a world uniquely his own,
rhythmically, harmonically and formally. A true original.
- Terry Riley

Jazzores Festival, Teatro Micaelense - The Azores - October, 2011 (Excerpts)

New Solo Album


(Edgetone Records)

From AllAboutJazz, Italy:
The pianist from San Francisco gave yet another demonstration of his irrepressible energy and
creativity, overwhelming (as we know from before) the barriers between musical categories and
between composition and improvisation. His performances are of instantaneous composition,
combining extemporaneous improvisation to create a sense of structure and consistency.

With McDonas we are faced with overflowing and irrepressible exuberance. His imagination
is overwhelming and unstoppable as a flood, as powerful as the fast current, often as red-hot
lava. A continuous flow, often turbulent, sometimes stops in temporary pools of calm, the
mood sweeter or absorbed.

From Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes:
“Dedicated to people and everyone else”. Good man, Thollem McDonas, refusing to limit the
extent of his music to selected members of the human race to embrace everybody. The same
feeling of all-inclusiveness is given by this solo CD, subdivided in three episodes recorded in
California and Italy, the first of which constituted a live accompaniment to Martha
Colburn’s films.

Among the principal features of the pianist’s style is the ability of overwhelming without
letting one feel intimidated. The massive polychordal cascades, the rumbling (yet never
rambling) arpeggios, the perseveration in trying to locate the keyboard spots in which
that roaring creature gathers energy and begins to fly. And then, just like that, the silence
falls: the preceding reverberations still floating while McDonas starts working the insides
of the instrument, scraping, dropping objects, tapping on the wooden constituents. It’s
not what you call a veritable research; rather, an attempt to have the piano depicting the
furious beauty and the subsequent sense of relief experienced in front of an imposing
natural manifestation.

Biography:
Thollem tours perpetually as a solo pianist, vocalist and collaborator regularly
covering much of North America and Europe playing his unique brand of composed
and spontaneous post-classical and hyphenated music. In the past 6 years, he has
added 23 albums to his discography on 10 different vanguard record labels in 4
different countries. His musical experiences are extremely diverse and his ever
expanding variety of approaches to making music result in dramatically new and
different outcomes. He plays in punk clubs, museums, concert halls and riots. He
works regularly with film makers, dancers, poets and painters as well as a wide array
of divergent musicians. He has won numerous awards and is the founding director of
Estamos Ensemble, a Mexican-American cross border ensemble for musical exchange.

Not long after birth, Thollem began studying the keyboard repertoire from the medieval to
the 20th century. After graduating with degrees in both piano performance and composition,
he dedicated his time for years in grassroots political and ecological movements before
returning to his own music with his full focus in 2006. He is currently touring perpetually
as a soloist, in collaboration with many other individuals and groups, as well as leading
large ensemble free improvisation workshops.

Thollem performs in theaters, art galleries, universities, elementary schools, concert halls,
jazz clubs, rock clubs, festivals, warehouses, house concerts, streets, forests, riots and on
television, radio and the internet. He has performed piano concertos with symphonies, played
in West African drumming troupes, Javanese gamelan ensembles, punk bands, free improv
ensembles, and regularly collaborates as a comproviser for film and modern dance. He
participates in communities as he travels, collaborating with individuals and
organizations, helping to connect artistic communities and artists.

Photo: Peter Gannushkin © 2011