Tomás Hradcky

Independent Film Composer:
Tomás Hradcky got his Bachelors of Music at The Dana School of Music. Growing up in a home filled with the culturally rich music he remembers thinking, "In my early teens I remember wondering why anyone would want to do anything else in life." In 1986 Tomás was accepted with scholarship to pursue a Masters of Performance degree from Mannes College of Music. Instead of attending, he decided he wanted to focus on writing music. This led him to Los Angeles California where for 22 years Tomás worked closely with composers Michael Convertino, John Williams, Danny Elfman, John Debney and Steve Bartek, in addition to scoring over a dozen shorts and small films. In essence it was working with these composers that Tomás feels he got his "Masters", this time in composition.

His diverse influences started early. He grew up surrounded by constant music at home, which primarily came from his Eastern European lineage - Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian - (Tomás is 2nd generation Eastern European). What also caught Tomás's early interest were the likes of Cat Stevens, Harry Belafonte, Chet Atkins and Harry Nilsson. He was ultimately drawn to study the composers who pushed the boundaries of his view of what music meant, through their sonic experimentation and their roots in all ancestral diatonically influenced music. The most influential of those being Peter Gabriel, Jane Siberry, Elliot Smith, Jocelyn Pook and the classical composers Samuel Barber, Brahms, Philip Glass, Bartok, Beethoven and possibly the most influential in Serge Prokofiev.

Decades of developing his own extensive library of acoustic based music elements has given him access to multiple sonic palettes to interweave with real acoustic instruments. Many of these textures have been so thoroughly manipulated as to allow Tomás to write cues wonderfully described and put best by director David Eblen of Ravanas Game. "Each of his cues is a world unto itself. Some traverse familiar ground, but all carry his distinctive stamp. What I was looking for was music that traveled across melancholic and eerie landscapes. His music did just that while also hinting at exotic lands which had a strong appeal to me."

His films have been accepted and screened in festivals such as:

The 27th Chicago Latino Film Festival (2011) -/- Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival (2011) -/- The Tiburon International Film Festival -/- The New York City Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival -/- The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles -/- The New Orleans Film Festival -/- The Fifth Annual Providence Jewish Film Festival -/- The Hollywood Black Film Festival -/- The San Francisco Black Film Festival -/- The Ann Arbor Independent Film Festival -/- Bollywood and Beyond Film Festival in Stuttgart, Germany -/- Big Bear Lake Film Festival -/- Riverside International Film Festival -/- Aarhus Festival Of Independent Arts (AFIA) -/- The Sinking Creek International Film Festival in Nashville -/- The Idyllwild International Film Festival -/- Tasveer South Asian Fest - Seattle -/- Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City -/- and at the Director's Guild of America, Los Angeles: Cinematographer's Guild Emerging Filmmakers Showcase.