Thomas Tierney (1942-) | University of Illinois Archives

Thomas Tierney was born in Columbia, Missouri and raised in Murphysboro, Illinois by his mother, Jane Rollo Tierney; he spent summers with his father Jack Tierney and stepmother Mary Tierney in Clarendon Hills, Illinois. He wrote songs in the 5^th and 7^th grades, but in high school he became fascinated with film, theater and television soundtracks and began studying composition and writing songs for plays.

In 1961 he began his bachelor's degree in architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but later changed his major to advertising – while also studying piano and theory in the School of Music. In that same year, he produced his first musical revue Livin’ the Life with the Illini Student Board. As a student he composed  songs for the annual Stunt Show, Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity, and the Men’s Glee Club (Singing Illini). During his senior year, he produced his first musical theater work for television, Gettin' On To Evenin', which aired on WILL-TV. After graduating in 1965, he pursued and earned a Masters degree in Radio and Television from the University of Illinois in 1968. During that time, he did music and lyrics for another original musical, A Special Saturday, which also aired on WILL-TV. Following this, he began work on a PhD in Communications, but abandoned the degree to pursue a career as a composer in New York City.

In 1969, Tierney began working for the New York Telephone Company as a writer in public relations. They sponsored his first corporate show at the New York State Fair. Soon after, he met his future wife Maureen, who worked for the same company, and the two were wed in 1974. In the early 1970s, Tierney received contracts to create music for corporations – for advertising commercials as well as special music for company shows and meetings. These companies include Coca-Cola, Astra USA, Oral-B, IBM, and State Farm Insurance. His song "Bringing the World Closer To You" served as the theme song for AT&T's pavilion “The Age of Information” at Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center. He also composed music for two NBC-TV musicals for the series Unicorn Tales and Tommy Tune’s one-man musical Ichabod, based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Through his commercial and theatrical work, he has won numerous ASCAP awards and served on the Board of Governors at the New York Television Academy.

Since 1971, Tierney has composed several hit musicals that have been performed on national tour and in Off-Broadway locales like TheatreWorks/USA and Connecticut’s Goodspeed Opera House. He has collaborated with such librettists as Ted Drachman (Narnia, Susan B!, The Amazing Einstein), John Forster (Teddy Roosevelt, The Dream Team, Eleanor – An American Love Story), Jeffrey Haddow (Diamond and the North Wind, The Year of Living Dangerously) and Sean O'Donnell (Jungle Queen Debutante). In 1984, Tierney's one-act musical First Lady, which was later renamed Eleanor, was performed at the White House. It received a 1999 performance at Ford's Theater for which then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was in attendance. His Narnia Suite was performed at Lincoln Center in 1997 by four singers with a 50 piece orchestra. Many of his works are designed to be performed by or for children, including The Fabulous Fable Factory (with co-author Joseph Robinette) and his Zack Hill and the Rocket Blaster Man Adventure, which was composed in 2020 and is based on the nationally syndicated Zack Hill comic strip. In 2024 it was published by the Dramatic Publishing Company (home to several of Tierney’s musicals).

In 2021, Tierney authored the book Five Guys in a Beetle - The Grandest Grand Tour: Europe, 1963, which was published by Sunstone Press and documented his college road trip to Europe. Tierney and wife Maureen divide their time between New York City and Sarasota, Florida.