Snow Spotlight: Tom Hardy

Tom Hardy is one of John Snow College's many talented musicians. He's an internationally recognised and regularly commissioned composer, arranger and orchestrator and has played piano for 14 years. Within College, Tom's played piano for Formals and other events and across the University he's an in-demand musician having held a position as Creative Director of the Durham University Jazz Society and composer/arranger for DU Jazz Orchestra and DU Big Band this academic year.

As part of his work, Tom has had the opportunity to play across the country and has played venues from the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 2019, to Birmingham Town Hall. Recently, Tom was part of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra's yearly shows at Ronnie Scott's in London, conducting his music across two nights of sold-out shows. As part of the tours and concerts Tom works, he has been able to perform his music at an assortment of exciting venues from Woolwich Works in London to Usher Hall in Edinburgh. He has had exciting opportunities to work with a range of artists and creative figures, including the GRAMMY Award winning Tim Garland and was recently invited to a private dinner with HRH Prince Edward as a representative of National Youth Jazz Orchestra.

Outside of Jazz and conducting, Tom is a lover of musical theatre and is currently the lead orchestrator on Gray Wood's new musical "The Things Left Unsaid", which premiers in Southhampton later this year. He also takes work as an independent score-writing consultant for Warwick Music's educational publishing arm. In his spare time (?!) he conducts and sings choral music and runs his own Jazz Orchestra in London – The Living Room Project.

The surprise factor is that Tom is not a Music student but a first year Physics student!

Tom has thoroughly enjoyed his first year at Durham as part of John Snow College and is passionate to get others involved in physics and music. He's interested in student representation and improving teaching and learning on Durham and sits on the Physics Department's Board of Studies representing all first year students and forms part of the first year Student Staff Consultative Committee team in the Department. In order to help improve access to physics from underrepresented backgrounds, he is part of the Physics Department's outreach arm on the Levelling-Up: Aspire Higher Programme; which seeks to create a more diverse, representative student intake in the Durham STEM community.

We are tremendously proud to have Tom as part of our John Snow Community and we wish him well for what promises to be an exciting and successful future.