Thollem Mcdonas
pianist/vocalist/composer/improviser, recent recipient of the 2006 National Endowment of the Arts Meet The Composer grant from Washington DC, was born Feb. 23, 1967 in the San Francisco Bay Area of Irish and Cherokee descent. He is presently living in Prague. He began his musical training as a young child rigorously studying the keyboard repertoire of European composers from the renaissance to the 20th century. After graduating with degrees in both piano performance and composition he chose to become homeless for several years, opting to wander and live
out of a backpack, rather than pursue a career as a concert pianist with a suit and tie. It is because of these dichotomies and rich, wildly disparate experiences that his music is so dynamic and appeals to such a wide variety of audiences.
His travels as a performer have covered much of the North American continent and Europe. He has performed extensively as a soloist as well with groups. He is a founding member of several innovative ensembles, and is responsible, in full or in part, for many albums of original music, with Edgetone Records and Pax Recordings as well as some self released. In the past year he has toured Italy and logged 13,000 miles on the road throughout America. After the release of three albums in 2005 and four in 2006, he is planning many more this coming year.
Thollem has performed in theaters, art galleries, universities, elementary schools, concert halls, jazz clubs, rock clubs, festivals, warehouses, house concerts, streets, forests, the Shoshone Desert at the Nevada nuclear test site, on television, radio, in circuses, and riots. He has performed piano concertos with symphonies, played in many free improvisation groups, West African drumming troupes, and Javanese gamelan ensembles, all the while working as an accompanist and a composer for opera and modern dance.
Currently Thollem primarily plays his own comprovisations which he calls post-classical circus punk world jazz free music, for people and everyone else. His music whispers/screams, "There are as many worlds in a life as there are lives in the world".

"McDonas' piano are Defalla (driving rhythms and Iberian modes), Shoenberg (unresolved dissonances a mile high), the collapsing/expanding tempi of Nancarrow, and splatterings of Cecil Taylor..."
-Tom Djll, Signal to Noise

“The sound he gets is highly reminiscent of the brilliant (and brilliantly obscure)
Thymme Jones…a really different approach to the piano, to say the least.
The cats at Windham Hill would probably cringe in horror at what he's doing here,
but Sun Ra would have liked this guy.
Highly recommended for those interested in hearing the extremes of possibility when one man with unusual ideas sits down to beat the hell out of a piano.”
– RKF Dead Angel

"classical chops and an attractively extreme viewpoint."
-Greg Burk, Music Critic LA Weekly

"McDonas welds elements of jazz, blues and classical music into a mighty tower of song, then shatters his construct with the breathless bull-rush of a mystic improviser."
-The River Front Times

“Thollem has that rare gift of soulful equilibrium, which he alternates with digital dexterities that have few equals on the current scene.”
- MASSIMO RICCI, TouchingExtremes

"McDonas is a pianist with highly developed technical skills at the piano. His flourishes and runs up and down the keyboard are executed with crystal clarity."
- Winthrop Bedford, Jazz Improv Magazine

“McDonas's piano playing is bright and expressive”
- J. Worley Aiding & Abetting

"My favourite moments doing my reviewer's job are like this, the very instant when you come across a genius and are among the first ones to realize and tell the world."
- Massimo Ricci, TouchingExtremes

"With each song McDonas creates a universe of its own...very original... a fresh voice"
- Dolf Mulder, VitalWeekly

" Thollem dives headlong into fascinating unforeseen and bold musical adventures that make him one of the most interesting pianists of the current improvised music genre."
- Eduardo Chagas, Tomajazz