Tommy Reeves
Born and raised in San Diego, California, Tommy Reeves discovered his love for music at fourteen years of age after being invited to sing in a neighbor’s barbershop quartet. Soon after, he realized his love for the piano and began teaching himself to play. When Tommy was first getting into music he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his heroes, the “Piano Men”. Artists such as Billy Joel, Elton John, Bruce Hornsby and, yes, Barry Manilow inspired Tommy to write, sing, and play the piano, to speak about his life through lyrics, and most of all to entertain. Tommy took a serious interest in vocal arrangement and composition after being influenced by recordings of the Hi-Lo’s, the Singers Unlimited, Claire Fisher, and the Manhattan Transfer. Tommy studied with Phil Mattson and Michele Weir at the Phil Mattson School for Singers and later attended the Dick Grove School of Music, where his emphasis was on contemporary piano styles and improvisation.
Besides playing every coffee house, night club, bar, and wedding reception he could, Tommy also found the time to be creative in other aspects of the music business. Tommy has written, arranged, and produced music commissioned by Apple, APM Music, and independent record labels such as Cleopatra, Tidal Wave Records, and Catalina Island Music. He has played with such diverse artists as Reba McEntyre, Burt Bacharach, Jesse McCartney, Melissa Etheridge, Chaka Khan, Liza Minnelli, and Betty Buckley. Tommy has arranged and recorded for Academy Award-winning song writers Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn and the hit song-writing team of Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. He served as Musical Director for the musical “Showstoppers”, written and directed by Michael Chapman, as well as various other musical theater productions working with Charles Nelson Reilly, David Fury, and Gary Kroeger.
Tommy has also been very involved in music education in and around Los Angeles. He has been the Director of the Keyboard Institute of Technology (KIT) at Musician’s Institute in Hollywood, CA since January of 2003 and has been a part of the music programs at The Help Group, a nonprofit school system for children with physical and developmental disabilities, for many years.
Tommy loves playing live, and in addition to playing with his own band, he has played keyboard and produced for several independent artists with styles ranging from Adult Contemporary, to Country, to Goth, to Christian Rock. Tommy released his first CD entitled “Another Lap Around the Sun”, which he wrote, produced, and arranged in 2001 and has just begun pre-production on a new CD, to be released in early 2007.
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