🔉👋 Hey, I’m Chris. I write music, write about music, and play percussion in contemporary chamber-band Alarm Will Sound.
My weekly newsletter Music and Math and Feelings is for those who object to seeing music stripped of all context by streaming services and social media. It explores a broad range of musical topics: from just intonation to electronic music to drum corps to artist mental health.
I also use this space to explore, analyze, and visualize the music of my favorite artists and colleagues, as well as share my own. Click here for a taste of the most popular posts.
New things arrive Sunday mornings. You can subscribe for free.
About Me. My path began in a drum & bugle corps when I was 15 — I performed with the Santa Clara Vanguard as a tenor player for two years (and lived to tell about it). I started composing around the same time, with the influence of marching percussion always right beneath the surface.
That was followed by music school for percussion performance and composition — first at UCLA, then at Juilliard. For the past 20 years I’ve been performing contemporary music and Broadway shows in New York City.
In 2008, I joined the contemporary chamber music band Alarm Will Sound, who have become my family and with whom I still perform today.
I have released five solo albums that lean heavily into electronic music, marching percussion, sound design, and microtonality (particularly just intonation) — my music also tells stories about my own and our collective mental health.
Are you a vinyl, cd, or bandcamp person? Well hello there. Meet me here.
Also visit chrispthompson.com for everything.
Subscriptions are free.
If you upgrade to a paid subscription I’ll send you a lovingly-designed vinyl record or compact disc of your choice. You can browse the options (and also listen to all my albums) at this link.
*Note: all the art and animation, including thumbnails, are made with love by me, no AI involved. Unless you’re talking about the Japanese “AI” 愛, which means love. They are made with lots of that.
The “dark mode” thumbnails indicate blog-style posts, while the “light mode” thumbnails also have additional attached music or podcasts — which you can add to your favorite podcast player.
