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Thomas Heck is a lifelong classical guitarist with both a gift and a passion for accompanying the human voice. A Yale-trained musicologist, he has published major contributions to the knowledge and understanding of the guitar's history and literature. As a scholar, he has held Fulbright Fellowships in Austria and Italy, and was awarded a Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship near the end of his formal academic career to enable him to investigate visual representations of the performing arts. He is principal author and editor of the book Picturing Performance: The Iconography of the Performing Arts in Concept and Practice (Univ. of Rochester Press, 1999). Heck's original compositions include the "Simple Prayer" (Peace Prayer) of St. Francis, and "What is Holy," a song that you can see and hear on YouTube. His arrangements of jazz for classic guitar are featured in Jazz Goes Classic, a popular Mel Bay anthology. |
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A resident of Santa Barbara since 2001, "Professor Tom" has become a familiar and welcome presence in many retirement communities, where he often leads group singing of the great American song heritage with a ready guitar, a warm baritone voice, and an unusually musical whistle (which seems to delight many in his audiences). A sample can be heard in the song "I gave my love a cherry," an MP3 file listed in the bar to the left. A profile of Tom's therapeutic use of music around Santa Barbara was featured in the News-Press
