Holdings Alumni Association Alumni Thomas Tierney Music and Pa... Finding Aid Title: Thomas Tierney Music and Papers, 1954-2024
ID: 26/20/268
Primary Creator: Thomas Tierney (1942-)
Extent: 38.0 cubic feet
Arrangement:
Organized in three series: Series 1) Commercial Music, Series 2) Musical Theater, and Series 3) Personal Papers.
Series 1 is organized into two sub-series: Sub-Series 1) Commercial Music and Sub-Series 2) Audio-Visual Recordings. Both sub-series are arranged alphabetically by company name.
Series 2 is organized in seven sub-series: Sub-Series 1) The Dream Team, Sub-Series 2) Eleanor - An American Love Story, Sub-Series 3) Jungle Queen Debutante, Sub-Series 4) Narnia, Sub-Series 5) Off-Broadway Musical Theater, Sub-Series 6) Music Theater Scrapbooks, and Sub-Series 7) Audio-Visual Recordings. Sub-Series 1-4 are arranged chronologically. Sub-series 5 is arranged alphabetically by production and chronologically therein. Sub-Series 6 is arranged numerically by scrapbook number, following a roughly chronological arrangement. Sub-Series 7 is arranged alphabetically and chronologically therein.
Series 3, Personal Papers and Recordings of Original Music, is arranged chronologically.
Date Acquired: 08/19/2024
Subjects: Alumni, Music Composition, Music theater, New York City, Theater orchestra music
Languages: English
Consists of commercial musical theater production records, audio recordings, scripts, scores, correspondence, personal papers, and scrapbooks, highlighting Tierney's career as a musical theater composer. Also includes music and recordings made for commercial businesses – including New York Telephone, State Farm Insurance, and IBM – highlighting his career as a commercial music composer. Of note are the production records for The Dream Team, ELEANOR – An American Love Story, NARNIA (based on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe), and Jungle Queen Debutante as well as material relating to TheaterWorks/USA and the Goodspeed Opera House.
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 5th and 7th 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.
Repository: The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music
Acquisition Source: Thomas Tierney
Acquisition Method: Gift
Consists of sheet music, correspondence, photographs, contracts, scripts, scrapbooks, and audio recordings, documenting Tierney's work as a musical theater composer. Of particular note are the materials relating to The Dream Team, which was premiered at the Good Speed Theater, and Eleanor, which was performed at the White House and Ford's Theater.
Materials are arranged into seven sub-series: Sub-Series 1) The Dream Team, Sub-Series 2) Eleanor - An American Love Story, Sub-Series 3) Jungle Queen Debutante, Sub-Series 4) Narnia, Sub-Series 5) Off-Broadway Musical Theater, Sub-Series 6) Music Theater Scrapbooks, and Sub-Series 7) Audio-Visual Recordings. Sub-Series 1-4 are arranged chronologically. Sub-series 5 is arranged alphabetically by production and chronologically therein. Sub-Series 6 is arranged numerically by scrapbook number, following a roughly chronological arrangement. Sub-Series 7 is arranged alphabetically and chronologically therein.
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