Tobin James Mueller is the founder and editor of ArtsForge. He has released thirty recordings, ranging from solo piano to ensemble jazz, progressive rock to musical theatre standards and the American Songbook. Recordings available from CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon.com, Spotify, etc. He has written twelve musicals, several dramas, ballets, symphonies, lyrics to over 300 songs, a series of works for children, and has contributed to nearly every ArtsForge Collaborative Project.
His latest highly acclaim jazz recording is a 2-volume set reinterpretting the best jazz standards: Standard Deviations (2018). He followed this up with an equally impressive 2-volume progressive rock and pop ballad compilation, WONDER (2019).
As an interpretive pianist, Mueller created a series of award-winning albums that gave a jazz spin to the classics: The Masterworks Trilogy and was included in Fanfare Magazine's 2015 Critics' Choice list. This was followed by a solo piano/spoken voice album that paired original piano with famous quotations from literature: Afterwords, which made Jazziz Magazine's Best New Recodings List (2017).
Other honors include: Rain Bather, a Jazz ensemble recording, won the 2009 Jazz Album of the Year award from JazzChicago.net. Aside from his many other awards his work has achieved, perhaps the most important was his induction into the United Nations 1994 Global 500 Roll of Honor, in London, for my work with youths and the environment. See Cross-eyed Pianist. for a recent interview of Tobin, conducted by BBC music reporter Fran Wilson.
2019 saw Mueller digitize all of his nine CenterStage Musicals. He released 10 albums, including TOBIN MUELLER: Best of the CenterStage Years. They are now available online.
An artist and entrepreneur in many fields, Tobin is an award-winning composer, playwright, lyricist, author, digital artist, director and producer. He has been a member of the Dramatist Guild since 1996. He's also written two novels, two works of nonfiction, several collections of poetry, two symphonies, a ballet, and a series of children's musicals. In 1994, he was inducted into the United Nations’ 1994 Global 500 Roll of Honor for his work with youths and the environment worldwide.
Tobin is co-founding a unique non-profit arts endowment organization, ArtsNexus, devoted to awarding monetary grants to new and established performing artists. ArtsNexus will also serve to assist new artists in the successful completion of their visions and will help connect artists interested in collaborative projects through shared expertise and financial assistance.
A native of Wisconsin, Tobin has served as past president of the Wisconsin Theatre Association - Children’s Theatre Division and was a Wisconsin Arts Board Artist from 1989-93. Among the awards received by his internationally recognized CenterStage Children's Theatre Troupe are the 1994 Wisconsin Association of Environmental Educators’ “Earthguard Award” and the 1993 Midwest Renewable Energy Association’s “Environmental Excellence Award”. His youth musical “To Save the Planet” has been performed over 400 times in seven countries.
As an outgrowth of his experimental online arts community, Artsforge.com, Tobin has collaborated with dozens of artists in creating everything from computer game software ( Xianu Override) to online illustrated novels (including Dreamless and The Power of 10). ArtsForge Galleries continue to display the best art on the web.
Tobin was living in downtown Manhattan on September 11, 2001. He has transformed this exprience into a lyrical music oddessey, Holy Land, a 15-track CD, and recorded his experiences in the acclaimed Journal from the Street, which also includes original photography. He has produced a double jazz CD, "What Survives?", a reinterpretation of the music from his off Broadway show, “Creature,” a collaborations with Artsforge musicians. He is also working on a CD of jazz, classical, and folk musicians crossing over into progressive rock with the group SILENT SUN; and several other cross-genre musical collaborations. In collaboration with Dave Matthews, Tobin is planning an MP3 online project that will build a song using submissions from musicians across the web.
Tobin attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Marquette University, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, studying musical composition, physics and journalism. As an entrepreneurial artist, he has founded several companies and continues to spend a great deal of his time encouraging new artist to cross traditional boundaries and collaborate on innovative multi-genre projects.
Contact Tobin Mueller via his Official Website.
See the MacJams' Blog Interview for an in depth bio...
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