Bio
Waddy Thompson's works have been performed at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A., St. Louis Spring Festival, Chicago Festival of New Music, Florida New Music Festival, Brevard Music Festival, Symphony Space, and at other venues. Described as "atmospheric" (Winter Morning by a Lake) and "engagingly antic" (Aria and Parody) by The New York Times, his works speak with a harmonic language all their own, very occasionally drifting into tonality, while always relishing melody.
Growing up in a small southern town, his earliest musical education was centered on marching band, but through the invitation of two members of the local music club he found himself playing French horn with them in Brahms' Horn Trio. The violinist, Marie Jennings, had trained at the New England Conservatory and encouraged his further study as a hornist and composer at the Brevard Music Center. He spent five wonderful summers there as camper, counselor, and finally as faculty.
He graduated from the Eastman School of Music (B.M., 1975), where he was a student of Samuel Adler and Joseph Schwantner. Of equal influence were Douglass Green, author of Form in Tonal Music and his horn teacher, Milan Yancich. Having decided that opera was his calling, he attended graduate school at Florida State University, where he studied with Carlisle Floyd and subsequently with Allen Sapp, earning a M.M. in 1976 and D.M. in 1979. 
He was a member of Encompass New Opera Theatre's composer/librettist workshop in the early '80s. The product of that workshop, The Girl on the Via Flaminia, was presented as a work in progress. Encompass also produced his chamber opera, All Are Not Frogs Who Gape for Flies. After 20 years of self-imposed compositional silence, be began writing again in 2008, atypically with a Christmas carol, "Embrace the Grace," which was recently published by Sound Music Publications.
He currently is Executive Director for the InterSchool Orchestras, which provides pre-professional training for public and private school students in grades 1 - 12 through six orchestras and a symphonic band. He is a member of BMI.