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- Thomas Bickley
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Thomas Bickley
Born in Houston, Texas, Thomas Bickley holds degrees in
music, liturgical studies and librarianship. His
studies included African American sacred music with
J. Jefferson Cleveland, recorder with Scott Reiss,
Gregorian Chant with Ruth Steiner and Deep Listening
with Pauline Oliveros. He lives with his spouse in
Washington, DC, where he teaches recorder, new and
early music to adults and children at the Capitol
Hill Arts Workshop, and assists with the
multicultural liturgical music at St. Stephen and the
Incarnation Episcopal Church. He has performed in
Washington area productions of Ione's Njinga the Queen
King and at the SonicWorks New Music Festival at
DiverseWorks Artspace in Houston, collaborated with
the Denison/Kimball Trio for their CD Neutrons
(Quarterstick QS48CD), and been the featured composer
on the Avant-Garde program on KPFT-FM, Pacifica Radio
in Houston.
"To tell the story of Comma, I'll begin in 1994. I was suffiently tired of
lack of contact with other people interested in new music that I began the
New Music Meetings at Diversity University on the net. These weekly salons
were and are open to anyone interested in new sonic art. One of the people
who began attending was Matt. Eventually we figured out that we were both
in the DC area, discussed the possibility of performing Zorn's Cobra, and
actually met in person one springtime Saturday at Roaster's on the Hill.
We never got the Zorn project accomplished, but in retrospect, the contact
was definitely a seed for Comma. Sometime after I began the New Music
Meetings, I learned that there was a newly established listserv about John
Cage titled SILENCE. I subscribed and through that met Joe. He began
attending the New Music Meetings too. I think our first sonic
collaboration was as contributors to the Sonic Memorial for David Tudor
(available at http://www.artswire.org/NewMusNet). Joe was in Austin and
Dallas at that time, and on one of my trips back home to Texas I had very
good conversation over an acceptable Vietnamese meal with Joe and my good
friend John Snyder in Austin. Joe found engaging opportunities for work in
the suburbs north of DC in the summer of 1997, moved and several of us on
SILENCE discussed celebrating Cage's birthday face to face. That
performance festival, AtlantiCage ninety-seven85 included Joe, Matt,
Douglas Cohen and myself performing Four6.
Joe, Matt and I enjoyed the experience and sought to form an ensemble. We began life as a quartet with our esteemed colleague Michael Wilpers. At a Vietnamese restaurant in Georgetown (DC, not Texas), Matt, Joe and I discussed possible names for the group. We considered the name Stimmung. We played with acronyms based on our initials. As those efforts weren't yielding good results, we toyed with parts of speech and eventually puncuation marks. We decided against some punctuation marks as they were more suitable for sub-genres of rock. I suggested the name Comma. We pondered the range of meanings. By the next day it had gelled as the appropriate name for the ensemble. Still thinking of ourselves as a quartet, Matt composed Sevenroughs. We had one rehearsal with Michael before other commitments led to his decision to not continue with Comma. Though we were very sorry to see him go, his participation helped us decide that we wanted to focus on using male voices. We considered seeking a fourth baritone singer. No obvious candidates emereged and we already had a concert scheduled (Matt's Brave New World program). We realized that we worked as a trio and plunged ahead to explore the menu of possiblities three voices afford us. We sample from that menu even now, gaining skill, learning from each other, and listening along with the audiences. I'd like some vegetarian spring rolls, please."
