Tom Allen (broadcaster)

Tom Allen (born 1961) is a Canadian public radio broadcaster, concert host,

Allen has published three books of autobiographical non-fiction: Toe Rubber Blues (1999),[5] Rolling Home (2001)^[6] and The Gift of the Game (2005).^[7] He received the 2002 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction for Rolling Home, his memoir of a cross-Canada rail journey.^[8]

Since 2010, in collaboration with his life partner Lori Gemmell (harpist) Allen has been creating shows that mix storytelling, history and music. They call these shows "chamber musicals." With consistent support from festivals and companies such as Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre, Ottawa's Chamberfest, Music Niagara and Stratford Summer Music, these shows often include performers such as soprano Patricia O'Callaghan, cellist, singer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Fox, violin virtuoso Mark Fewer, and others. Titles include 2012's Bohemians in Brooklyn'', a cabaret-style revue based upon the lives of the musicians and writers living in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1940s, The Missing Pages''[2] (about Theodore Molt, the only Canadian to meet Ludwig van Beethoven), Being Lost, created with longtime friend and CBC producer Jeff Reilly, about American composer John Cage's misadventures in the woods of northern Saskatchewan in 1965 and, most recently, JS Bach's Long Walk in the Snow, about 20 year-old Johann Sebastian Bach walking 400 kilometres in 1705.

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