THOMAS BELLINO – Biographical Information

Thomas Bellino is a musician, composer, producer, educator and arts administrator. Bellino is a recipient of Meet The Composer awards as well as commissions from the Museum of the American Indian (Soundtrack for Star Gods of the Ancient Americas) and the IBM Corporation (Soundtrack for Out of the Mists).   As a performer, Mr. Bellino has been featured with numerous ensembles in the northeast and has toured and recorded with Gretchen Langheld and House Afire. Recordings of his own music were regularly featured on public and college radios stations across the nation. John Schaefer from WNYC referred to his music as “original and engaging” in his book New Sounds.  Mr. Bellino has recently created a series of short compositions for a digital story project focusing on HIV positive young adults in Africa .

As an arts administrator Mr. Bellino worked as Jazz Program Specialist for Chamber Music America where he administered the New Works Creation and Presentation Program funded by the Doris Duke Foundation and the ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming.  He also worked in Program Research and Artist Development for Young Audiences/ New York for over seven years. He served as Coordinator of THE MAX Program (The Musical Arts eXperience - a collaboration between the New York Philharmonic, Young Audiences/ New York and the New York City Board of Education). He managed and directed the Young Audiences/New York Program Department, overseeing the design and implementation of all programs and technology initiatives.  His work at Young Audiences encompassed the design and production of numerous arts education programs including an outreach component for the Smithsonian SITES exhibit Beyond Category and student recording projects for the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS).  Bellino has also served as a consultant to BMG Entertainment where he designed a student composition workshop series for the Bertelsmann, Sony/BMG World of Expression Scholarship Program.

Since 1997 Thomas Bellino has focused much of his attention on the jazz community, working on behalf of artists such as the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-stars, the JazzHopRevolution, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (VJO) to name a few.  He created and serves as Executive Director of Planet Arts Inc., a GRAMMY and ASCAP award winning 501(c) 3 not-for-profit recording/education/presenting company based in Catskill , NY , where he oversees the daily operations of the company including: fiscal management, program development, artist negotiations, record production, education initiatives, presenting initiatives, grant writing and general fundraising.  Bellino’s recording projects have received a total of 9 GRAMMY nominations, 1 GRAMMY award and one AFIM award.  His presenting programs received the prestigious ASCAP award for Adventurous Programming in 2005.  

Current projects include: the Kingston International Jazz Festival, the Rhinebeck Jazz Festival, the one2one Jazz Series, the Creative Music Studio Archive Project with Karl Berger, a new recording/presenting initiative with BluJazz Productions and the Creative Arts Exchange in Chicago , IL ., the One Over Chaplin pop/rock project, the Tone Structure project and the Open MIC (Music Industry Connections) project.

 www.PlanetArts.org