The Reese Project -- Article "Poet of Music"

Central PA Magazine
  Musician and composer Tom Reese is a man of blues.
  No, maybe a folksy man of Irish music.
  A classical kind of guy? He definitely is the type of person who can say, "Shakespeare was a brilliant jazz musician" -- and make you believe him.
  There is no definitive catch-all label besides musician-composer (and, perhaps, occasional poet.  It all depends on where and when you've heard him, or which of his many recordings you may own.
  Working within the boundaries of various music styles -- and, sometimes, stretching those boundaries -- "helps me become more in touch with what's around me as a freelance musician," he says. "It helps me be more aware of the world and what the world wants to hear."
  Reese'foray into the arts began when an Elizabethtown College professor encouraged his interest in poetry. It still remains a love os his, says Reese, who has pulled together a collection of his verses. "I would be totally satisfied with being a poet of words."
  Instead, he has turned to the poetry of music, using it to paint his own sorrows, as in "Lament for Cora Lee" recorded by the Susquehanna Ensemble, a group of Central PA instrumentalists with tastes as eclectic as Reese's. And he has used it for his musings on nature, like "Acorn Waltz" with the Arcona Reel Band or "La Valse de Neige," written during a snowstorm and performed with the Susquehanna Ensemble.
  "I often had the whole idea mapped out to convert visual to musical," he says. "I've always been focused to the point where I know pretty much what I want out of the tune before I start."
  Reese plays soprano flute and seven other woodwind instruments from around the world -- from the Irish pennywhistle and Italian ocarina to the Chinese bamboo flute and Peruvian pan pipes -- as well as keyboards.
  He has been edging toward classical efforts lately, and recently had the chance to play Beethoven's Mass in C with an orchestra. It was, he says, "like the Little League slugger meeting Mickey Mantle."
  When it's a truly great piece, written by an inspired composer, playing the score can be like meeting part of the composer in person.
  "When I was inside of it, playing with the orchestra, the sound ... it was exciting. You can touch him. A voice is added, it's collective, and you're part of a powerful spirit.
"Nothing I've ever heard is as important as Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Debussy. I'm learning, from listening to classical music, how to write music. And the style doesn't matter."
  Now, after years of writing music for solo instruments, ensembles and bands of all types, Reese thinks he knows what his biggest opus will be.
  It's a concerto for his wife, cellist Laurie Haines Reese. "Without Laurie, I wouldn't have any of this," Reese says. "I wouldn't have the ambition to do this with my skills, and she inspires it."
  But he doesn't bring Laurie in to test newly written passages. "I don't want to use my wife as a tool to write this," he says. "When she plays it, I want it to be spiritual. I want her to be inside it and make it hers."
  Writing the concerto will be "four years of my life," he predicts, "and it'll probably be the most important thing of my life."