Today, we are talking with Tom Clowes. Tom is the founder, Executive Director, and cellist of Crossing Borders Music. Founded in 2011, Crossing Borders Music has become a leading, critically acclaimed interpreter of music by composers from under-represented cultures. Crossing Borders Music was a Headline Artist at the African Festival of the Arts, a Resident Arts Organization at the Chicago Cultural Center, and has been presented by the Old Town School of Folk, Montréal’s Society for the Research and Promotion of Haitian Music, United World College of South East Asia, and at Chicago’s Symphony Center through the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s African American Network. Crossing Borders Music has been featured on NBC-5 and ABC-7 Chicago News, on WFMT, on WBEZ, in the Chicago Tribune, and as a Critic’s Pick in TimeOut Chicago. Through a grant from the Sparkplug Foundation, Crossing Borders Music recorded a world premiere album of original chamber music with the composer, Grammy-nominated sitarist Gaurav Mazumdar, and is now planning its release on Ropeadope Records.

Tom is also a cello teacher at Chicago West Community Music Center of East Garfield Park, a music teacher at the Ambassadors Music Institute Summer Music Camp in Croix-day-boquets, a member and past Board Chair at Second Unitarian Church of Chicago; and a volunteer high school program counselor at the Midwest Unitarian Universalist Summer Assembly. He enjoys making fancy coffees, doing crosswords, running long distances, questioning racist online comments, and sharing meals with Cambodians in Chicago.