Chris Thornborrow’s interests have led him to an array of endeavors that include concert music, film, and education. His music has been performed across Canada and in the United States, and the films he has scored have screened internationally. Chris co-founded the Toy Piano Composers in 2008 with Monica Pearce. The Toronto based collective has premiered dozens of new chamber pieces, orchestral works, and operas by emerging composers from across Canada.

His music has been described as, “complex and clear...” with “subtle playfulness,” (musicaltoronto.org). Performers of his work include Digital Prowess, TorQ Percussion, junctQín keyboard collective, the Bicycle Opera Project, Musica Reflecta, Ensemble Paramirabo, the Lam Trio, and the Array Ensemble. He has participated in a number of workshops with Continuum Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Ives Ensemble, The Buffalo Philharmonic, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, Soundstreams, and was a composer in residence at the Atlantic Music Festival in Maine. He won the University of Toronto orchestra composition competition for his piece Overcome (2011), and was an honourable mention in the Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music (2010). Most recently, he won the Toronto Emerging Composers Award Honourable mention.

Chris has scored over a dozen films, including andrew Cividino’s award winning short, We Ate the Children Last, which has been screened all over the world. In 2006, Chris’s interest in education led him to start the music program at the International Summer Camp Montana in Switzerland where he worked as a music teacher and assisted in programming at the camp.