INDUSTRY UPDATE
US: CLEVELAND, OHIO
Jason Victor Serinus
Thom Moore, the Grammy Award–winning producer and oboist who cut his teeth at Telarc Records before co-founding Five/Four Productions, died in Cleveland, on October 16, of a fast-moving brain cancer. He was 56.
Moore’s passing came at virtually the same time that Stereophile named his most recently released project, cellist Zuill Bailey’s DSD recording of Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello (Octave Records), our Recording of the Month.
Moore’s first two Grammy Awards, for Best Classical and Best Choral, came in 2002 for Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s fabled SACD of Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony. Two others followed, both for Best Crossover, with the Turtle Island String Quartet.
A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Moore made his mark as a crack oboist in the Cleveland area. A member or regular guest of the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Ohio Chamber Orchestra, and the former orchestras of the Cleveland Ballet, Cleveland Opera, and Lyric Opera Cleveland, he cofounded and served as principal oboist of the Red Orchestra.
“Thom had an ear second to none,” veteran recording producer and Telarc colleague Elaine Martone told Stereophile. “I never understood why he didn’t end up a regular oboist with a major orchestra. He realized he was ill when, on October 1, he was giving an ‘A’ to the Cleveland Opera Orchestra and no ‘A’ came out. Somehow, he got himself home. Sixteen days later, he was dead.”
“He had the funniest, quirkiest, snarkiest sense of humor,” Martone said. “Everyone knew to watch
