TomNeenan

Music Director Thomas Neenan is also Conductor of The St. Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra, and Lecturer in Music History and Music Theory at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena. He has been Music Director of St. Matthew’s Parish since 1981.

Mr. Neenan holds degrees from California State University, Northridge, and from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) where he was honored with an Outstanding Academic Achievement Award and was a prize winner in the Atwater-Kent Performance Competition. He includes among his teachers David Britton, Thomas Harmon and Delores Stevens, Jean Langlais, and Ernst-Ulrich von Kameke. As a recital organist he has performed in the United States as well as in Germany, France, The Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland.

At Caltech he teaches a full complement of music courses including a two-year series of music history courses; a music theory sequence and a variety of special topics courses (History of Opera, Major Figures in Music, Choral-Orchestral Literature, etc.). In 2001 he was honored by the Caltech student body with an Outstanding Teaching Award. He is a featured speaker in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's "Upbeat Live" pre-concert presentations.
With the St. Matthew Parish Choir and St. Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra he has premiered more than a dozen works, including those by Miklos Rozsa, Maria Newman, Mark Falcone, David Newman, Mary Lou Newmark, Sasha Matson, Thomas Pasatieri, Craig Phillips, Joseph Curiale, Roger Bourland and John O’Reilly.

Mr. Neenan and the Choir of St. Matthew’s Parish toured Central during the summer of 2003 singing services and concerts in Budapest, Tabor (CZ), Prague, Leipzig (St. Thomas), Dresden (Frauenkirche) and Naumburg (St. Wenzel’s).