Hi! My name is Tober Schorr. I grew up in Washington State and I’ve lived most of my adult life on Colorado’s Front Range. I’ve traveled, worked and lived on every continent except Asia and I speak several languages. And I play drums.

Music is important to me. When I was young, I envisioned my adult self working as a scientist and a writer, sort of a hybrid career. At 30, I chose to release that vision and embrace music as my new direction.

Drums caught my attention from a young age. I found a natural propensity for understanding rhythmic relationships and where rhythms’ vibrations sit in time. Music drew me in. I started playing drum set at 16, and was in my first band when I was 17. Then, in my final year at Colorado College, I joined a West African drumming ensemble. I was fascinated by the role reversal in the ensemble: instead of background support, the drums were up front, literally speaking, playing the melody of the music. This experience led to a deep interest in African culture as a whole.

The next step was a 2 year commitment to serving in the Peace Corps in Mozambique, where I taught biology in Portuguese in a Mozambican high school. While living there, a community member and I founded a drum and dance troupe for the local youth of the town, to help them preserve the older, traditional dances of their ethnic group, which were fast being displaced by Western influence.

Back home in the States, I settled in Boulder, CO, because I knew there were West African master djembe players living there. After a year of volunteering for a conference on sustainability, I got a job as a lab tech doing analytical chemistry and joined a West African drumming and dance troupe. We would train about 20 hours a week and did large scale performances, plus residencies in local and regional schools.

I became a father around this time, a foundational influence on my eventual teaching practice. After leaving my corporate science job, I traveled to West Africa to study the music and culture at its source, then returned to the States with the intent of changing careers and becoming a professional musician. I had kept my drum set playing going despite being more focused on African music during my 20’s, and enrolled at Metro State in Denver to study jazz drumming. In addition to studying jazz with Denver’s finest professional musicians, I also conducted thesis research on the relationship between African music, Black American music, and American music as a whole, and the social, cultural and historical implications of this relationship.

Upon graduation, I began my music career, learning student by student and band by band. As an educator, I am passionate about understanding the needs of each individual student and how to meet them. As a performer, I’ve learned how to be a supportive sideman and watched many other bandleaders struggle with the complex dynamics of running a band. I continue to work in the Boulder/Denver scene and my biggest aspiration is to one day lead my own band, with music I compose and arrange. I have begun to take the first steps to make this a reality, including starting a YouTube channel to showcase my work.

I have found being a musician and teacher to be an all-encompassing life path. Through my explorations, I’ve traveled to other continents, learned 3 foreign languages plus bits of several others, had life-changing insights into the structure of American society that led to a further awakening and deepening of my commitment to social justice, and formed most of the major friendships of my life.