Tom Zajac

Tom Zajac is a multi-instrumentalist widely praised for his versatility and his stylish playing. According to the Washington Post "...sacbut player Tom Zajac...was particularly versatile, also playing a bagpipe, flutes and recorders and, in some numbers, fingering a recorder with his right hand while he played a drum with his left." And the Cleveland Plain Dealer said, "The art of improvisation, long before the jazz era, was explored in a bagpipe solo dashingly played by Tom Zajac." He is a long-standing member of Piffaro, the Philadelphia-based Renaissance wind band, a founding member of the musical/theatrical group Ex Umbris, and a regular guest artist with the Folger Consort of Washington, D.C. He has appeared with numerous other leading ensembles in the US including the King's Noyse, Newberry Consort, Violins of Lafayette, Waverly Consort, Concert Royal, and New York's Ensemble for Early Music. He can be heard on over 30 recordings, ranging from medieval dances and baroque opera to contemporary folk-rock, on such labels as Dorian, Deutsche Gramophon, Angel EMI, Virgin Veritas, Harmonia Mundi, Lyrichord, and Windham Hill. With Ex Umbris, he performed at the 5th Millennium Council event in the East Room of the White House during the Clinton administration. He has also played serpent in a work by P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schikele) for the nationally broadcast radio show A Prairie Home Companion, hurdy gurdy for an American Ballet Theater Company performance of a work choreographed by Twyla Tharp, bagpipe for an internationally broadcast Gatorade commercial, and percussion for a 16th-century equestrian ballet at the Berkeley Early Music Festival in California. He made his Carnegie Hall debut playing shawm for the New York Gay Men’s Chorus, and the sound of his bagpipe (on recording) awoke the astronauts every morning on a 2001 space shuttle mission. Tom is much sought after as a clinician at recorder and early music workshops throughout the US, having worked with students age 6 through 96, and is director of the early music ensembles at Wellesley College near his home in Boston, MA.

Here is a picture of Tom playing flute with Brad (and Larisa):