Thomas Conroy's Storefront

Thomas Conroy—composer/lyricist Dr. Thomas Conroy completed his doctoral work in music composition at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University. His teachers there include Anthony Brandt, Pierre Jalbert, Kurt Stallman, and Karim Al-Zand. The Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra premiered his dissertation, an orchestral work titled Symphonic Metamorphosis, on December 8th, 2006. For this work, Dr. Conroy has been named the first recipient of the Paul Cooper Memorial Award in Composition. Composer Paul Cooper was one of the founding members of the Shepherd School of Music. While at Rice, Dr. Conroy taught harmony, piano, and composition. He was the production manager of MUSIQA –a dynamic group of local composers who create and promote new music– for several years. He has sung with the Houston Chamber Choir. They commissioned a new work from Dr. Conroy, This Is Why I Sing, to celebrate their 10th anniversary season and premiered it on May 9th, 2006. Prior to attending Rice University, he completed his Masters Degree in composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music [SFCM] where he won prizes in orchestral and choral composition. He studied privately with David Conte and read counterpoint with Conrad Susa. As a winner of the James Highsmith Composition Prize, the conservatory orchestra premiered his Essay For Orchestra on their final concert of the 2002-2003 season. While living in San Francisco, Dr. Conroy sang tenor with the Grammy Award winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus. He pursued the Boulanger tradition with Philip Lasser and Narcis Bonet at the École Normale de Musique, Paris, in the European American Musical Alliance [EAMA] composition course (2002, 2004, 2005). He received diplomas with highest honors and distinction and presented performances of his string, choral, and piano compositions. He is a member of ASCAP. He studied film scoring at the Aspen Music Festival in 2003 and was on the faculty of the Perry-Mansfield school in 2001 [songwriting, musical theatre scene study, private voice, and basic tap]. Prior to his recent academic experience, he toured as an actor with several Broadway shows including Crazy for You, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, and Grease, as well as Bernadette Peters’ concerts in San Francisco. Currently, he is writing the lyrics and composing music for a new musical drama: Searching for Spinoza ¬–book and lyric content by Suzanne Ishee. I have live in Ohio (Youngstown and Cincinnati), New York City, San Francisco, and Houston. In addition to studying at SFCM and RICE, I all but completed the masters program in Music Theory at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. While at CCM, my attention was drawn toward musical theatre and if you read the bios of the stars of today, you will see why. I witnessed them evolving and blooming back then and they continue to be a huge inspiration. In New York, I studied theatre at AMDA (1991), T. Schreiber Studios (1998-99), the Manhattan School of Music Summer Musical Theatre Course (1993), and privately with many wonderful artists ¬– especially Prudence Holmes. In London, I attended the Royal National Theatre Acting Course in 1999. One very important aspect of my time in New York centered around and with the Musical Writers’ Playground [MWP] led by Leslie Becker, DJ Salisbury, and Vincent Paul Boyle. This was where I learned to re-write and re-write . . .