Bill grew up in Chicago and despite a promising future in math and computers, decided at the last minute - much to his family's dismay - to major in music at Northwestern University. After two years he realized he was better suited to being a hippie and went hitchhiking around the southwest. Somehow he never got around to going back to school, but managed to be hired at various computer programming jobs. Then he discovered music - again.

It began with International Folkdancing and he quickly made a name for himself as a popular folk dance musician in New England. He formed and played in a variety of bands focusing on Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian, Greek and Klezmer musics. Along the way dipping into Scottish, English, Scandanavian and a host of others.

After a few years, he realized that there was a vibrant and growing indigenous dance form called contra dancing right in his New England backyard. Everything else slowly dropped away and he has been playing for contra dances all over the country and beyond ever since. He primarily plays in The Latter Day Lizards, one of the most popular and sought after contra dance bands in the country and has recently been making appearances with Notorious.

In the middle of all that contra dancing, he finally awoke to the joys of jazz, studying it informally and playing around with it for many years. After moving to Boulder in 2004, he discovered this very nice group of people who happened to be great musicians and were having fun with a variety of jazz-like music at a certain coffeeshop just down the block from where he lived. The rest - as they say - is history.

Locally, he plays tenor sax with the Boulder Big Band, can be seen most 2nd and 4th Wednesday at Ziggy's Cafe in Longmont.

www.billtomczak.com

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