Brooklyn Native | Ithaca Transplant | Adopted Rochesterian | Citizen of the USA and Croatia

Nikola Tomić is an engaging and dynamic trumpet performer active in Upstate New York and the New York City area. Nikola’s versatility and enjoyment of soloist and background roles alike have taken him to stages all around the USA, as well as to Latin America and Europe. In Manhattan and Brooklyn, he has performed at venues including The Jazz Gallery, Swing 46, the Drawing Room, the Cutting Room, the West End Theatre, New World Stages, Silvana, St. Peter's Church, the Slope Lounge, Williamsburg Music Center, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Miller Theatre at Columbia University. He has appeared at festivals including the Umbria Jazz Festival, the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival, the Tri-C JazzFest, and the International Cervantino Festival.

Nikola is a teaching artist and brass coach for the Empire State Youth Orchestra’s CHIME program and teaches the trumpet in the Jazz & Contemporary Music program at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA. During the 2024 to 2025 school year, he will teach trumpet at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He taught previously at Cornell University, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, and the Ithaca College School of Music. Deeply committed to education, Nikola is active as a teacher and clinician and has maintained a private teaching studio since 2003. He taught from 2010 to 2013 for the Eastman Community Music School, providing instruction in trumpet and music theory and working with the New Horizons Band Program, and was on faculty at the Ithaca College Summer Music Academy from 2013 to 2019.

In addition to publishing a blog on artistic and pedagogical topics here, Nikola regularly contributes CD reviews and articles to the International Trumpet Guild’s quarterly journal. His articles “Upward Spiral” and “Alternative Approaches to Warming Up” can be found in the March 2020 and June 2019 issues of the ITG Journal, respectively. Nikola is also active as a freelance editor and consultant for both academic and more casual writing about music, and for website content including personal bios, project descriptions, and blogs.

Nikola holds doctoral and master’s degrees in Jazz Studies & Contemporary Media from the Eastman School of Music and a bachelor’s degree in Trumpet Performance from Ithaca College. His teachers have included Clay Jenkins, Bill Dobbins, Harold Danko, Frank Gabriel Campos, and Steve Brown.