Mission Statement

Hello, and welcome to my page on Third Stream Music. Although we’ll be talking about the works of other composers and getting your feedback on their music as well as my own, I’d like to assume, for the moment, that you know something about the genre itself and move on to telling you more about my own approach to composing and how I feel I might have something to contribute.

From day one of composition I realized that I was so equally attracted to both Classical and Jazz styles that I would never abandon one for the other and that there could easily exist a dynamic and synergistic relationship between the two.

So, what better way to achieve this than to employ the most exciting and dynamic musicians that I knew at the time – drummers like Elvin Jones and Rick Cutler, horn players such as Joe Farrell, Jimmy Owens and Richard Jones and then hopefully myself with substantial material as a source of composition and improvisation.

I’ll let you be the judge (Listen to the pieces on the MP3 Player, visit the rest of my site and be a friend on myspace.com/tompkinsjazz), but suffice it to say that my earliest works tended to exploit the natural clash or contrast between styles and that subsequent works would try to achieve contrast and dynamics within a self-made idiom that had gradually become more personal.

But is it really more personal and original? Are my efforts more (or less) successful than previous efforts? Is it really important, or even very interesting to be so stylistically inclusive in art, or would you rather enjoy one style at a time, depending upon your mood of the moment? Let me know. I’d love to get your feedback! Just click on the MP3 link in the menu to listen; and enter your comments under the Third Stream post in “Categories”.