Tom Constanten

Did You Know?

• Constanten recovered from a heart attack in 2012.
• In August 2016, he broke his neck after slipping on wet cement while walking to the post office.
• As of August 2025, a GoFundMe titled 'Stand with Greg Martens to Support Tom Constanten' was set up to help with his medical bills.

Biography

Tom Constanten was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he wrote orchestral pieces as a teenager. He briefly studied astronomy and music at the University of California, Berkeley, and there met future Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh in the summer of 1961. The two became roommates and dropped out, then enrolled in a graduate-level course taught by Italian modernist composer Luciano Berio at Mills College. Constanten also studied piano with Mario Feninger.

In 1962, he lived in Brussels and Paris, met Umberto Eco, and studied on a scholarship with members of the Darmstadt School, including Berio, Henri Pousseur, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez. After rooming again with Lesh in Las Vegas and returning to the Bay Area, Constanten performed with an improvisational quintet formed by Steve Reich. The group's style was influenced by both jazz and Stockhausen; in a 1964 performance, the ensemble played serialism-influenced compositions by Constanten and Lesh.

Terry Riley allowed the ensemble to premiere In C, though only Reich and Jon Gibson appeared in that performance. Facing the draft amid the Vietnam War, Constanten enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1965 as a computer programmer. He was not given a security clearance after divulging past communist sympathies and remained stationed at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas. While on leave, he used LSD and composed music on military mainframe computers, including the IBM 1401.

By 1967, he had been promoted to sergeant. He first collaborated with the Grateful Dead as a session musician on Anthem of the Sun (1968), using three-day passes to travel to Los Angeles to record.