Tom Constanten

All Music Guide:

Tom Constanten, composer and second keyboardist for the Grateful Dead, was born on March 19, 1944 in Long Branch, NJ. In the fall of 1961, he met future Dead bassist Phil Lesh while studying astronomy at U.C. Berkeley in California. The two hit it off famously. Soon they were rooming together, cranking out avant-garde compositions. They enrolled at the legendary Mills College to study with composer Luciano Berio. When Berio invited the pair to accompany him to Europe, Constanten eagerly accepted, while Lesh stayed Stateside.

While in Germany, Constanten studied with many of the luminaries of the contemporary classical music world, including Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Henri Pousseur. Following a stint in the air force in 1965 and 1966 (to avoid the draft), Constanten rejoined Lesh as a member of the then artistically thriving Grateful Dead. Constanten brought an experimental influence to an already wildly eclectic (and just plain wild) ensemble. He added prepared piano and other assorted weirdness to the band's two psychedelic studio masterpieces, Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa in 1967 and 1968. Unfortunately, things didn't go quite as well on the road, where the band found their home for most of the year. Combined with his burgeoning interest in scientology, Constanten found his playing drowned out by the band's wall of guitars. By 1970, he'd amicably parted ways with them.

Constanten spent the '70s, '80s, and '90s mostly in the Bay Area, creating odd compositions, teaching piano, and playing shows around the periphery of the Dead scene. He composed for the theater with some success, including the off-Broadway play Tarot (the music from which was released on United Artists in 1972), ultimately winning a silver medal in the New York Critics' Circle Poll. In 1986, he was an artist in residence at Harvard University.

Throughout this period, he toured occasionally and released albums by himself, or through small imprints (such as Relix Records), which often featured variation on Dead tunes like "Dark Star." His music remained extremely intelligent, though it often fell prey to thin sounding synthesizers, faring better when he stuck with acoustic piano. In 1988, he collaborated with Dead lyricist Robert Hunter for a disc of Hunter's translations of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. He recorded with Henry Kaiser on 1990's Heart's Desire, and began an ongoing partnership with latter-day Dead keyboard technician Bob Bralove that resulted in the Dose Hermanos project. In 1993, he married Beth Diggs. A daughter, Clarissa Lee, was born in 1997. Following her birth, Constanten and family relocated to North Carolina.

Wikipedia:

Tom Constanten (born March 19, 1944 in Long Branch, New Jersey) is an American keyboardist, best known for playing with the Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970.

Biography

Known among friends and colleagues as T.C., Tom Constanten studied music at University of California, Berkeley, where he met Phil Lesh. He and Lesh studied composition with Luciano Berio, the Italian modernist composer, and both were influenced by Mahler. Constanten also studied piano with Mario Feninger. In 1967, after graduation, Constanten went to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.

In 1964 in San Francisco, Constanten performed with an improvisational quintet formed by Steve Reich, who went on to become an important minimalist composer. The group's unusual style was influenced by both jazz and the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. In a 1964 performance, the ensemble played compositions by both Constanten and Phil Lesh, at which minimalist composer Terry Riley walked out, but later he was willing to have this ensemble perform his well-received piece In C. However, only Reich and one other member of group, saxophonist-composer Jon Gibson, appeared in the piece's premier performance.

Constanten was adopted as the seventh member of the Grateful Dead during the recording of the band's second album, Anthem Of the Sun (Warner Brothers, 1968). The pianist was a child prodigy who wrote orchestral pieces as a teenager while growing up in Las Vegas. In the summer of 1961, TC met Dead bassist Phil Lesh at Berkeley, where each professed a love for classical music. The two became roommates and enrolled in a graduate-level course taught by Berio at Mills College in Oakland. Constanten joined the Air Force in 1965 and was a sergeant stationed in Denver who specialized in computers when the Dead enlisted him to record Anthem Of the Sun with them during his weekend leaves. When he was selected as Airman of the Month, Constanten used the three-day pass to record with the band. The day after an honorable discharge, TC made his stage debut with the Dead on November 23, 1968 at the Memorial Auditorium in Athens, Ohio. He remained with the group for three albums and left after the band's infamous New Orleans bust following a January 30, 1970 show at the Warehouse. "It was like a magic carpet ride that was there for me to step on," he says. "I would have been a fool not to."

While he had successfully contributed to their complex experimental music, his instrumental style, at the time, was less rock and more classical. Also, there was some feeling that he did not fit in with the Dead ethos; for example, he followed Scientology, and refused to take LSD.

In 1994, he was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the group, The Grateful Dead.

Philosophy

In 2002, Tom Constanten stated in an interview:

I know of no path that is better marked than the study of music. Maybe I just think so because it's the path I'm on. There's the old question "How come there's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over." Well, here's an answer. Settle down. Do it right. However long it takes. That's the direct route to the fast lane!

Personal life

Contanten currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has two children, Clarissa and Jeffrey.