Tom Gurin is an American composer, multimedia artist, and carillonist based in Switzerland. As a 2023 laureate-resident at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, he received a Mortimer Hays Traveling Fellowship from Brandeis University to build an installation inspired by French bells and bell towers. He was the 2021-2022 recipient of a joint Fulbright-Harriet Hale Woolley Award at the United States Foundation in Paris, where he completed residences in both music and sculpture. He is a Fellow of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation.
A graduate of the Royal Carillon School in Belgium, Gurin served as Duke University Chapel Carillonneur until summer 2021.
He studied composition at Yale University, the École Normale de Musique de Paris, and privately with Allain Gaussin. He is currently a master’s student in electronic and multimedia composition at the Haute École de Musique de Genève.
At Yale, he earned a degree with Honors in Music Composition studying with Kathryn Alexander and Konrad Kaczmarek. Upon graduating in 2018, Gurin received the Paul H. and Brigitte P. Fry Award for Excellence in the Performing Arts. He also received the Headland-Linck Scholarship in the Humanities in 2017.
Tom has presented his work in cabaret shows, at art galleries such as the DOC artspace, and at music festivals such as the Archipel Festival in Geneva, IlSUONO Contemporary Music Week in Italy, and the American Conservatory program in Fontainebleau, where he received the Marion Tournon-Branley prize for his installation and performance combining music with architecture. In addition, he has participated in the highSCORE New Music Festival in Pavia, Italy, and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival at Mannes School of Music in New York City, where he was an Emerging Composer Fellow. The Yale Symphony Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra of China, the Sonus Foundation for New Music and Contemporary Performing Arts, and other ensembles around the world have performed his compositions.
Gurin has also been commissioned and published as a composer of music for the carillon. He won first prize in the 2022 Perpignan (France) Carillon Composition Contest. He received a Performance and Publication Award from the Johan Franco Composition Competition in 2021 and was a winner of the Twilight Composition Contest at the 74th Congress of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America.
Gurin served as Duke University Chapel Carillonneur from 2019-2021. In May 2021, he performed the dedicatory recital of the new carillon at North Carolina State University—the first traditionally-made American carillon in over fifty years—after consulting on its installation in the prior months. He holds an artist diploma “With Great Distinction” from the Royal Carillon School “Jef Denyn” in Mechelen (Belgium). Gurin was a United States Fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation from 2018-2019 while studying in Mechelen. During his undergraduate studies in music at Yale, he was president of the student-led Yale University Guild of Carillonneurs, co-founding the group’s Alumni Advisory Board during his senior year. He has been a professional member of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America since passing the examination in 2017. He has performed on over one hundred carillons around the world, including guest recitals at Princeton University, Longwood Gardens, the University of Michigan, Yale University, and dozens of churches and universities across North America and Europe.
His recent musicological article, Overtones, Sonic and Politic: Octatonicism, Minor Thirds, and Bells, was published in Volume 71 of the scholarly journal of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America in April 2022.