Saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Tom Pereira was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. While attending the Berklee College of Music in the late 1980’s, he studied with many of the masters, including Billy Pierce and Joe Viola. After taking off several years to go on the road with a variety of musical acts, Tom returned to college in Olympia, WA and received his BA in Music Composition and American Literature. During this period he began working closely with the great trumpet player, Barbara Donald, who helped him to develop his individual style of composing and improvising. While in Olympia, Tom also studied and played with Sonny Simmons and Prince Lasha.

During the mid-1990’s Tom lived primarily in San Francisco, where he co-led the quartet “New Garde Philosophers” with guitarist Andre Bush. He also led a quartet under his own name and released his first solo recording, “Fat City Suite” (Blow Cat Blow! Records). In addition to local and regional club gigs, Tom toured throughout North America and Europe as both a sideman and bandleader and appeared on several other albums.

Tom moved to New York in 1998 and plays regularly there with such musicians as Ed Schuler, Doug Wamble, Liberty Ellman, and Vijay Iyer. He established a second home in Berlin, Germany in the year 2000 and uses it as a base to tour throughout Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland.

As a player, Tom is influenced by an assortment of musical greats: Ornette Coleman, Sonny Simmons, Stan Getz, John Coltrane and Joe Henderson, among others. As an artist, his greatest inspiration comes from conceptual innovators like Shostakovich, Ellington, Monk, Miles, William Faulkner, and the Ba’al Shem Tov - thinkers whose search for new ideas and standards expanded the influence of their art. Ultimately, Tom seeks to combine in his music the type of artistic creativity and personal exploration that these innovators embraced.