Teacher

Critically acclaimed stellar [Chicago Tribune] countertenor Thomas Aláan has been a featured soloist on radio shows, album recordings, concert series, and festivals across the United States.

Thomas is engaged in teaching, directing, and musical administration. His home studio in Chicago is vibrant, with singers of all backgrounds and genre interests. He is on the Artistic Team of OperaWorks™, co-directs The EcoVoice Project and the Bach and Beethoven Experience (BBE), and is Assistant Conductor and Director of Women’s Schola at Holy Name Cathedral. He is a sustainability educator at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he runs the internationally acclaimed Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy and teaches Music as a Tool for Environmentalism and Change and The Music and Science Connection in the Honors College. He also moonlights as an occasional saxophonist. Thomas has presented talks on singing, music in environmental spaces, rhetoric, interdisciplinary collaboration, and entrepreneurship in the arts at conferences including the Loyola Climate Change Conference, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, the Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy, the Helena Music Teachers Association, The People's Music School, Self Employment in the Arts (SEA) Art Business Entrepreneurship Workshop, as well as various universities.

Thomas received his Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Performance from the University of Wisconsin - Madison where he was a Paul Collins Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellow studying with Jim Doing. His research interests include the performance practice and ornamentation of Sean-nòs singers; educational frameworks for approaching science, philosophy, and environmentalism through music; and the use of music in sociopolitical and environmental movements. He also holds a Master of Arts in Vocal Pedagogy from Texas Woman's University (where he studied with Joan Wall) and a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education (PreK-12 certification).