Biography of Tom Bellino
Tom Bellino is a Grammy and ASCAP award winning producer as well as a musician, composer, 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). He has also composed and produced the music for Yes in My Backyard - a documentary that had its national premier on PBS and has recently created a series of short compositions for a digital story project focusing on HIV positive young adults in Africa. As a performer, Bellino has been featured with numerous ensembles in the northeast and has toured and recorded with Gretchen Langheld and House Afire. His 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.
Tom Bellino has worked on behalf of artists and organizations such as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-stars, the JazzHopRevolution, Slide Hampton, Karl Berger’s Creative Music Studio, The New York City Department of Education and the Jimmy Heath Big Band to name a few. He created and serves as Chief Executive Officer 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 12 Grammy nominations, 2 Grammy awards and one AFIM award. His presenting programs received the prestigious ASCAP award for Adventurous Programming in 2005.
As an arts administrator 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 Department 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.
Bellino is the founder and producer of the Kingston International Jazz Festival, the creator and producer of the innovative one2one Jazz Series, the director of the Creative Music Services program and the Open MIC (Music Industry Connections) project. He served on New York Grammy education and Jazz committees and has been a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, The New York Department of Cultural Affairs and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Jazz Program.
Current projects include the award winning Jazz one2one performance series, the Tone Structure project, the International Jazz Collective and special initiatives with the U.S. State Department in Tunisia.