Bio

Tom Splitt is a composer, songwriter, poet and pianist whose concerts, recordings, and writing have received widespread critical acclaim. He is a Chicago native and a Northern Illinois University graduate. He lives in Colorado.

I became a musician, especially a composer, when my 8 year old fingers stumbled upon a harmonious combination of notes on the piano that formed what I soon learned was a chord. Derived from the French d’accord, in agreement, and which later acquired the sense of ‘feeling, emotion’, as in ‘strike a chord’. It was all this to me and more. Something in me vibrated like the strings in the piano. I didn’t play the chord, it played me. And it has been so ever since.

Many biographies are summaries of formal training, accomplishments, places, dates, names, but such a summary is the lesser half of mine. My musical journey, or what I best remember of it, has largely been an inner one, and it has led me to writing for the voice:

“Song is the symbol of the word which links the creator’s power to what it has created, insofar as the latter recognizes its dependence as a creature and gives it expression in joy and worship or prayer. It is the creature’s breath responding to its creator… By comparison with instrumental music- and this shows how ancient the tradition is in the Celtic world- song was primeval. Music, even sacred music, was no more than a craft.” – Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant

The journey forward has led me back, to the very beginning, to this most basic and holy human expression.