On Saturday, November 16 and Sunday, November 17, our beloved faculty member, guitarist Thomas Flippin, performed with great mastery as soloist with the Stamford Symphony. Thomas played Joaquín Rodrigo's landmark work Concierto di Aranjuez under the baton Steve Hackman, the second piece in a program which included Mozart's overture to The Magic Flute and Dvořák's Symphony No. 7.
Concordia celebrated Thomas’ appearance with the Stamford Symphony at The Palace Theatre: Concordia College President Dr. John Nunes proudly opened the concert with Russell Jones, CEO of the Symphony, and the Conservatory hostied the post-concert reception in The Palace Theatre. Quite a crowd of students, faculty, and families cheered Thomas on.
THOMAS FLIPPIN is established as an original and versatile voice in the world of contemporary music. Whether premiering new works with his pioneering classical guitar ensemble, Duo Noire; performing avant-garde art songs on the theorbo as part of Alicia Hall Moran’s Black Wall Street; or plucking the banjo in the American Repertory Theater’s critically-acclaimed premiere of The Black Clown, Flippin’s playing has been hailed as “lovely” (New York Times), and “spectacularly precise” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).
Recent concert highlights include performances at Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, The Metropolitan Museum, Beijing’s Peking University, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Charleston’s Colour of Music Festival. Flippin has performed in concerts featuring MacArthur Fellow Jason Moran, Renee Fleming, Imani Winds, and members of Eighth Blackbird and the Emerson String Quartet, as well as a solo performance honoring the president of Juilliard.
Flippin’s recent album on New Focus Recordings, Night Triptych, is the culmination of the 2015 project he launched with the Diller Quaile School of Music to address the lack of female representation in classical music. Featuring new works exclusively by leading women composers, Night Triptych received universal praise from critics for being a “truly pathbreaking recording” (AllMusic), that is “astounding” for its “sheer musicality” and “goldmine of ideas and feelings” (Stereophile).
Flippin graduated with honors from the University of Chicago before attending the Yale School of Music (M.M., A.D.). In addition to his faculty position at Concordia College Conservatory, Thomas teaches at the Diller Quaile School of Music. His primary teachers were Benjamin Verdery, Denis Azabagic, and Dr. Julie Goldberg. When he’s not practicing, he enjoys mountaineering.