- Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, 2019
"The bad-boy of organ music"
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Liam Mullen, Cornelia Magazine, 2022
Bio:Described in the press as “manically unpredictable”, and “the bad-boy of organ music”, Thomas Mellan is an organist, pianist, producer and composer based in Los Angeles. In 2012, he played his first recital at Eglise St. Eustache in Paris. He is featured in the official Walt Disney concert hall organ DVD. In 2018, his European tour included a residency at the Lviv Concert Hall, where he gave the Ukrainian premier of Messiaen’s Livre d’Orgue on the largest organ in Ukraine. In 2023, he performed in the international festival on the historic Schnitger organ at the Jacobikirche in Hamburg. As performer he specializes in virtuosic repertoire from the 19th and 20th centuries as well as French baroque music.
His music has been performed in America, Europe and Asia by performers including the Sakura Cello Quintet, Orest Smovzh, Stephen Tharp and Jared Jacobsen. His output features « impossible » organ music that attempts to push the limits of organ technique, but also a 40-minute set of inventions for solo violin, a concerto for five cellos, and electronic music which straddles the lines between avant-garde classical music, experimental dubstep and death metal. In 2025, he performed Pierre Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata for the Los Angeles based series Piano Spheres, to commemorate Boulez’s 150th birthday. He contributed harpsichord and synthesizer parts on Delirium Musicum’s debut album “Seasons”, released in 2023 by Warner Classics and produced by Fred Vogler. He graduated from the USC Thornton School of Music in 2017 with a BM in organ and composition and in 2020 with an MM in organ and an MM in composition. He attended Thornton for 7 years on full-tuition scholarship |