Thomas Dolby: An Evening of Music and Storytelling

This is a solo show in which Thomas deconstructs half a dozen of his best-known songs, telling the story behind their creation while breaking down the beats, chords, keyboard parts, and synth sounds, looping and layering them until he has recreated the entire song. Thomas’ simple rig is a couple of keyboards, a drum pad, and a MacBook, the output of which is projected on a screen behind him, so the audience can see 'under the hood’ while he performs each piece.

The list of breakthrough innovations in Thomas Dolby's 35-year career is continuous. As an early MTV icon, he blazed a trail for electronic music with his imaginative videos. His synth playing and production have graced the recordings of Foreigner, Def Leppard, George Clinton and Joni Mitchell, earning five Grammy™ nominations. He appeared live with Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock, with David Bowie at Live Aid, and with Roger Waters at The Wall in Berlin. And his self-penned She Blinded Me With Science became a Top 5 Billboard hit, going on to become an evergreen geek anthem of the 1980s that still pops up in Grand Theft Auto, The Big Bang Theory, and Breaking Bad.

Sought after as a consultant for tech startups and research companies, Dolby seemed to have a hand in every emerging entertainment platform, from laser disks and computer games to interactive TV, virtual reality installations and location-based entertainment. Between adding music to the mix as in-house Music Director of every TED Conference from 2001-12, Thomas taught himself to be a digital filmmaker; and in 2013 he won multiple awards for his groundbreaking film The Invisible Lighthouse, which chronicles the closure of a 250-year-old lighthouse visible from his coastal home in Suffolk, UK.

Since Fall 2014 Thomas has held the post Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. He has recently released his first book The Speed Of Sound (Macmillan/Flatiron.)