Tom Constanten

Tom Constanten, composer and second keyboardist for the Grateful Dead, was born on March 19, 1944 in Long Branch, NJ. In the fall of 1961, he met future Dead bassist Phil Lesh while studying astronomy at U.C. Berkeley in California. The two hit it off famously. Soon they were rooming together, cranking out avant-garde compositions. They enrolled at the legendary Mills College to study with composer Luciano Berio. When Berio invited the pair to accompany him to Europe, Constanten eagerly accepted, while Lesh stayed Stateside.

While in Germany, Constanten studied with many of the luminaries of the contemporary classical music world, including Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Henri Pousseur. Following a stint in the air force in 1965 and 1966 (to avoid the draft), Constanten rejoined Lesh as a member of the then artistically thriving Grateful Dead. Constanten brought an experimental influence to an already wildly eclectic (and just plain wild) ensemble. He added prepared piano and other assorted weirdness to the band's two psychedelic studio masterpieces, Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa in 1967 and 1968. Unfortunately, things didn't go quite as well on the road, where the band found their home for most of the year. Combined with his burgeoning interest in scientology, Constanten found his playing drowned out by the band's wall of guitars. By 1970, he'd amicably parted ways with them.

Constanten spent the '70s, '80s, and '90s mostly in the Bay Area, creating odd compositions, teaching piano, and playing shows around the periphery of the Dead scene. He composed for the theater with some success, including the off-Broadway play Tarot (the music from which was released on United Artists in 1972), ultimately winning a silver medal in the New York Critics' Circle Poll. In 1986, he was an artist in residence at Harvard University.

Throughout this period, he toured occasionally and released albums by himself, or through small imprints (such as Relix Records), which often featured variation on Dead tunes like "Dark Star." His music remained extremely intelligent, though it often fell prey to thin sounding synthesizers, faring better when he stuck with acoustic piano. In 1988, he collaborated with Dead lyricist Robert Hunter for a disc of Hunter's translations of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. He recorded with Henry Kaiser on 1990's Heart's Desire, and began an ongoing partnership with latter-day Dead keyboard technician Bob Bralove that resulted in the Dose Hermanos project. In 1993, he married Beth Diggs. A daughter, Clarissa Lee, was born in 1997. Following her birth, Constanten and family relocated to North Carolina.