About

Tom Bancroft is an improvising drummer, composer, educator and innovator based in Pathhead, Scotland.

After initially studying and practicing medicine Tom has had a 40 year + career in the music industry throughout which he has played drums, bodhran and composed for a a wide range of ensembles and projects, film, dance , and theatre – examples of which you can find elsewhere on this site. Tom has composed extensively for big band including a suite of music composed for a UK tour with his big band by Geri Allen in 2004.

In 1998 Tom founded and ran Caber Music which released over 40 albums of Scottish Jazz until 2007 – exploring the use of CDR and direct marketing.

In 2000 he also started ABC Creative Music, a creative music education company with his twin brother Phil which over 25+ years has developed a full music education programme for early years, primary, and ASN sectors. Tom learnt to code and built over 200 interactives for the website and iPad. Together Tom & Phil have developed a pioneering Theoretical Framework for Creativity in Music Education, which they are now sharing with a range of music educators and organisations,  and are widely recognised as experts in this field. In 2025 ABC hosted the inaugural Conference on Creativity in Music Education in Glasgow.

Tom is a founder member of the Pathhead Music Collective – an organic collection of jazz and folk musicians living in his beloved home village of Pathhead in Midlothian, Scotland.

Since 2014 he has also been a core member of the Playtime Collective that hosts guests from the Scottish jazz, improvised and experimental folk scenes in fortnightly concerts in Edinburgh.  During COVID Tom led the development a unique way of improvising live over the internet, playing live online with musicians as far away as Tokyo. This has since led to Playtime releasing an album of these improvisations and producing a series of livestream concerts and podcasts on the Scottish Jazz scene.

Since 2022 Tom has taught drums at Edinburgh Napier University where is exploring a drum pedagogy based on creativity, konnokol, and the Joe Morello/George Lawrence Stone technical approach.

in 2025 Tom completed a PhD entitled ‘the Theoretically Scaffolded Improviser: the Emerging Primacy of Emotion, Metaphor and Meaning” which he hopes to publish as a book in the next wee while.

Tom has studied with Joe Morello, Suresh Vaidyanathan, Okoe Ardyfio, and Asaf Sirkis amongst others.

Tom is a very experienced educator having worked with every age range from nursery/elementary to conservatoire level and has extensive experience in training a wide range of non-specialist and specialist educators and teaching and mentoring emerging music professionals. Tom has worked extensively with the DISTIL programme for mentoring emerging traditional artists in improvisation and composition  skills, and was co-leader of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland with Laura MacDonald for 2 years.

Tom was part of the unique 90’s melting pot of jazz and traditional music scenes in Edinburgh, where he collaborated closely with Martyn Bennett, and has developed a unique way of playing the bodhran over 30 years as a ‘traditional-adjacent’ musician, and has remained interested in the interplay between improvised and traditional music. He has collaborated extensively with musicians in Ghana, Vietnam, Taiwan , and India.

Tom has two children and is a granddad, and in his spare time follows cricket and rugby, is pretty good at DIY, is OK at woodturning drum and bodhran sticks, and is a very bad welder.

Tom won the BBC Jazz Award for Innovation in 2007 and the Creative Scotland Award in 2004.