Thomas Whitman

Thomas Whitman (b. 1960) began his musical studies with cellist Harry Wimmer. His first composition teachers were Gerald Levinson, Thomas Oboe Lee, and Joan Panetti at Swarthmore College and Max Lifchitz. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where his teachers included George Crumb, Jay Reise, and Richard Wernick. His many prizes and honors include an ASCAP Foundation Grant and artist residencies at the MacDowell colony and at Yaddo. He has received commissions from New York's North/South Consonance, Philadelphia's Orchestra 2001, Boston's ALEA III, Network for New Music, and The Philadelphia Singers, among others. Mr. Whitman has taught at Swarthmore College since 1990. He is the founder and co-director of Gamelan Semara Santi, the Philadelphia area's only Balinese percussion orchestra, which performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra in October 2003 at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall. He also directs the Chester Children's Gamelan, a volunteer effort that introduces the rich traditions of classical Indonesian music and dance to schoolchildren in Chester, Pennsylvania.