Thomas Wells
Teacher

Tom Presently teaches at Walker/West Music Academy in Saint Paul.

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Music Educator

As a 36 year veteran public school music teacher, Tom has taught in Minneapolis for 34 years, teaching at all grade levels. High Schools were at the beginning and end of his career, including the Visual and Performing Arts Magnet at North High, and, in between, 21 years at Ramsey International Fine Arts Center, A K-8 Magnet Program. Tom ended his teaching career by reviving the band program at Roosevelt High School. His primary areas of focus were band and jazz, but also taught some general music, orchestra and choir.

Tom has also taught at The New England Music Camp in the summers of 1978, 1980, and 1991, as well as the Urban Center for Talented Youth, a cooperative program of Minneapolis and Saint Paul Public Schools. Other summer teaching experiences include the Center for Performing Arts in South Minneapolis and numerous MPLS PS Community Ed summer programs.

Tom Presently teaches at Walker | West Music Academy in Saint Paul.

Walker | West

Thomas Wells’ experience with North High School jazz band at the Visual Performance Arts Magnet School in 1984. Thomas Wells began a jazz combo program and worked on improvisation skills with all students in the band. Upon entering the McDonalds All Star Jazz HS Competition at the University of Minnesota, the group felt discouraged competing against well established groups.

“Out of scarcity, comes creativity.” Hear the inspiring story of Tom’s jazz ensemble receiving 5 (out of 10) outstanding solo awards from a pool of 120 students who entered in the competition.

Thomas Wells

Guyana Lutheran Music Academy

2017

Thomas Wells

Band On The Run

Fall 2012

At the end of his teaching career, Tom had the unique challenge and opportunity to resurrect a band program that had fallen on hard times and didn’t exist at all for two years. He had a whole lot of help from a whole lot of people and some never say die, students. This WCCO report from the fall of 2012 speaks to that effort.

HOBT

In The Heart Of The Beast Puppet And Mask Theater (HOBT) has employed Tom as Music Director and Composer for their annual May Day Festival Ceremony in Minneapolis from 2010- 2019. Tom travelled with the HOBT to South Korea in 2001 for the Madanguch Outdoor Theater Festival in Gwacheon, where he was music director and composer.

HOBT

This picture was taken during a jazz clinic at my school. My student had asked me for a reed, and I had given him a clarinet reed, instead of an alto sax reed, hence the “ Don’t you think you should know the difference?” look on his face.

Thomas Wells

Jazz Band

January 1997

Jazz Band Performance at Wild Rumpus Book Store 1997. This video was taken by that same Kindergarten teacher mother whose son on the drums is now the producer for Kendrick Lamar.
Thomas Wells

Drumline Washburn

February 1996

Ramsey International Fine Arts Center ( Now renamed Justice Alan Page Middle School) is located across a football field from Washburn High School. We received special permission to move all of our drums through a tunnel that connects the schools which travels underneath the Washburn football field. The video was taken by one of the member’s mother, who also taught Kindergarten at Ramsey. I taught at Ramsey from 1989- 2010. Leaving North High School was a heart-wrenching decision for me, but it allowed me more time to raise children and more time to perform my own music.
Thomas Wells

North High

1984-1988

This video was part of a promotion of the Visual and Performing Arts Magnet ( VPA ) located at Minneapolis North High School. The extremely handsome bald-headed guy playing the 3 note bass line is yours truly half a lifetime ago.

Thomas Wells

China Arts Exchange

April 1994

Columbia University’s Center for U.S. / China Arts Exchange.  Tom was selected to lecture, perform, and teach in Yunnan Province of the People’s Republic of China, after which he hosted teachers form Yunnan as they completed the exchange that fall.

I am honored to have worked with Tom Wells for so many years! I first noticed Tom as a consummate and energetic instrumental performer.Soon I recognized that he was also a composer, a conductor, a teacher, and an ‘idea person’ with the patience to enter a collaborative process. Thus began my many years of work with Tom. I invited Tom to enter the rich (and always challenging!) adventure of creating music from scratch for In the Heart of the Beast Theatre’s Mayday Ceremony. This demanded fortitude for a collaborative process to not only discover, compose, weave and conduct the music for the ceremony, but to also welcome ANYONE into the music making process. Tom’s instinctive passion as ‘teacher’ led him to build strong rapport with young and old alike, and with long time professional musicians working alongside beginning musicians. Tom went the extra mile with reaching out to students, finding the music that stirred their strengths—inviting in drumlines, choirs, and very young instrumentalists. This required extra organizing of revising music and even figuring out transportation for the teen participants. Amazing! The result bred an intercultural, multigenerational band unparalleled in most music performances. Tom accepted the challenge to be the music director for HOBT’s performances in South Korea for September 2001. This involved training performers by nurturing the intrinsic and unique genius of the participants despite cultural and language barriers. It was here where I fully appreciated his dedication to re-fashion the music with the twists and turns of the collaborative process, reinventing at the very last moment as the performances were overhauled to resonate with the sudden tragedy of 9-11. Tom’s prowess as a composer/conductor truly shone for the Mayday Ceremonies, and it is his patient work that underscored the emotional flow of the action. In rehearsals and planning meetings Tom would listen to the developing ideas, and then present various suggestions of ideas for the scenes. He was able to compose sweet ballads, sonic landscapes, big band numbers, or to shape someone else’s idea into a full offering.  Tom worked until the music and the action fully served each other. This is of course never easy, yet Tom was fully committed to this collaborative process, and thousands upon thousands of people who received these performances with In the Heart of the Beast Theatre reaped the depth of his generous skill. Thank you, Tom--I am truly lucky, and filled with gratitude for the many weeks, months, and years of working with YOU.
Sandy Spieler Former Artistic Director of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre

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