Berlin and Brooklyn-based clarinetist-saxophonist-composer Ken Thomson is widely regarded for his ability to blend a rich variety of influences and styles into his own musical language while maintaining a voice unmistakably his own.

Besides his own groups, Ken plays clarinets for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, one of the world’s preeminent contemporary music ensembles. As a teaching artist, he is on faculty at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and has given composition master classes to multiple universities across the globe, and taught as guest faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Masters program and as a composer mentor at the Ensemble Offspring Hatched Academy in Sydney, Australia.

As a composer, he has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Lorelei Ensemble, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vonk, the True/False Film Festival, Doug Perkins, Mariel Roberts, and others, and has received awards from New Music USA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, ASCAP and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. He is also a prolific arranger, with arrangements recorded by Meredith Monk (called “Top 25 Classical Tracks of 2020” by The New York Times) and David Byrne/St Vincent.  He has recently arranged the entire album “1996” by Ryuichi Sakamoto for the Bang on a Can All-Stars.