Thomas Claesen is a drummer and drum instructor from Ostend, Belgium. From the start of his musical career Thomas was very fortunate to have been taught by two Belgium’s most prominent educators: Johan Delacauw and Wim De Vlaminck. They, along with other teachers like Bruce Vrancken and Matthias Standaert, helped him build a broad musical foundation in the areas of drum set playing, orchestral percussion and rudimental drumming. In Europe he performed with the three-time Vlamo national champions Kameleon Percussie (Ostend, BE) and the Dutch indoor percussion ensemble Percussion Unlimited (Loon op Zand, NL).

In the Fall of 2007 and the Spring of 2008 Thomas moved to the United States to attend Arizona State University, where he was a percussion major and studied under Dr. J. B. Smith and Dom Moio, amongst others. Following his studies abroad, Thomas marched his first summer of drum corps playing tenors for The Academy (Tempe, AZ). He went back to The Academy in the summer of 2009. In those two seasons Thomas got the chance to learn from educators like Ryan Masterson, Fred Emory Smith, Brian Stevens and the world renown Glen Crosby.

In 2010 Thomas decided to move on from the Academy to the Santa Clara Vanguard (Santa Clara, CA), a corps he looked up to when he was younger. There he learned from Matt Ramey, Brian Mason and drum guru Murray Gusseck. Thomas marched his drum corps age out with The Cavaliers drum & bugle corps (Rosemont, IL). The world class Cavaliers percussion members and staff, including Eric Ridenour, Michael McIntosh, Brian Tinkel and Tim Maynard, worked hard to win the Fred Sanford Award for Best Percussion Performance, making Thomas the first Belgian and only second European to obtain this trophy.

Although Thomas has been teaching drummers since he was fifteen, he started focusing on teaching more after his first drum corps experience, sharing knowledge he acquired in America with European musicians. He was a tenor tech for Percussion Unlimited in their very successful 2009 season, winning the WGI European regional, CGN championships and IPE finals. In 2010 he started teaching DrumSpirit, Belgium’s top indoor drum line from Dadizele. At DrumSpirit, Thomas is currently the drum line caption head and battery co-arranger. Thomas is a linguistics and literature major at Ghent University. In the musical field he is devoted to educating the next generation of European rudimental drummers, prepared to teach everyone who is eager to learn.

Contact Thomas at thomas [dot] claesen [at] gmail [dot] com.