Musician ~ Vocalist ~ Performer ~ Songwriter ~ Producer

Tom Krol is a classically-trained professional musician, vocalist, music producer, sound engineer, arranger and song writer with a vast amount of live music performance and studio experience. A professional guitarist for 30 years with perfect pitch, Tom grew up with music on Chicago’s suburban west side.

At age 10, he won first place at a solo guitar competition at Chicago’s McCormick Place.

At age 12, he arranged a short 4-part Baroque music piece from band class for clarinet and then recorded his clarinet performances of each part using two audio cassette recorders and “bouncing” previously recorded tracks from the other. His first self-produced recording was this 4-part arrangement for clarinet.

At age 13, he received a piano scholarship with a teacher from Julliard.

At age 14, he performed solo clarinet live with the St. Louis Conservatory Orchestra behind him.

At age 18, he performed solo clarinet live with the York High School Concert band accompanying him. He was awarded a clarinet performance scholarship at DePaul University.

In high school he also played bass, drums, piano and sung and also performed with the school’s concert band, concert orchestra, pit orchestra, jazz band, pep band, and marching band.

In 1990, he graduated DePaul University with a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Music degrees with a major in Sound Recording Technology.

In 1986, Tom started his professional sound and music career at Universal Recording on Walton Street. He developed his sound engineering chops on almost every recording console there; Neve, SSL, Harrison, Amek, as well as using New England Digital’s Synclavier and AMS Audiofile, the first professional 2-track digital editing system.

In 1991, Tom moved to Los Angeles and worked at a studio in North Hollywood and later returned to Chicago to work as a sound engineer, copyist and session musician of guitar and clarinet for Chicago-area music houses including What the Hale Music Production, ComTrack, Steve Samler Music, Charles Brown Music and Mosaic Music.

Through the 1990’s, Tom co-wrote songs recorded in Nashville and recorded bass on an album with Alan Jackson’s studio sound engineer John Kelton. He won a Billboard Song Contest award along with co-writer Wendy Morgan for their song “Any Day Now,” released a music CD “Another Day in Cowtown” showing Tom’s alternative rock writing and production where he performed as a vocalist and guitarist, and released another self-produced music CD “Smooth” showing Tom’s smooth instrumental styles with guitar.

Since 1987, Tom has performed live music as a guitarist and vocalist with Chicago-area professional event music orchestras such as Orchestra 33, Phoenix, TVK Orchestra, Frank Amorosi Orchestra, Ken Arlen, TCO Music, Jeff Stitely, Dennis Keith, Larry King Orchestra, Brother Brother, Brian Patti, and The Associates. In 2010, he performed a live one-hour program on WFMT in a duet with John Hagstrom of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In 2011, Tom released “Primero,” a music CD of solo classical guitar music. Phoenix Classical (of Phoenix Records, Canada) wrote this about the CD: “excellent performance,” “expressive and emotive,” “excellent production quality,” and “very good radio potential.”

In 2012, Tom released “Love, Cynical” a music CD of his eclectic alternative rock music songs. Tom plays all the guitars as well as bass, drums, keyboards and he sings. It shows a combination of rock styles mixed with guitar sound design and some classical guitar as well.

In 2013, Tom’s song parody recordings receive praises for performance and production from Dr. Demento in Los Angeles.

In 2014 and 2015, Tom scored custom music featuring soundscape guitars for a web site and a rock-blues “Stevie Ray Vaughn” style for a video for Abbott Labs’ large annual meeting.

In 2018, Tom released his album “Passionart” of solo classical guitar music featuring recordings of a guitar that was previously owned and played by the late Maestro Andres Segovia on loan from Richard Brune in Evanston, IL.

In 2019, Tom released his album “Drift” of solo classical guitar music featuring the Segovia guitar along with some of Tom’s clarinet playing as well. The songs range from classical to Tom’s arrangements of popular songs for solo guitar.

In 2020, Spotify curated his arrangement and solo guitar recording of Chopin’s Waltz No. 10, now at over 16,000 streams without record label support. He also released several original songs and solo guitar pieces as singles on all music streaming platforms and online music retailers.



Tom solves Rubik’s cube, speaks fluent Spanish, and as a licensed electrician, he repairs electrical issues other electricians might not figure out.

Tom is an Eagle Scout who met the late Frank Sinatra, James Earl Jones, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Ramsey Lewis, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Baxter (Doobie Brothers) and The Dells.

Tom has recorded audio from Marion Brooks (NBC), Zoriada Sambolin (NBC), Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, WBBM’s Felecia Middlebrooks, His Excellency Paul Kagame - President of Rwanda, Chicago Bears Matt Forte, Chicago Cubs Kris Bryant, Fox Sports Troy Aikman, Victoria’s Secret supermodel Karlie Kross, Tiffani Thiessen (90210, Saved by the Bell, Cooking Channel), S. Epatha Merkerson (Law & Order, Chicago Med, major movies), Bill Rancic (first season winner on “The Apprentice”), Giuliana Rancic (E! news), Monica Pedersen (HGTV), WNUA’s Denise Jordan Walker, Dr./Fr. Michael Pfleger, Dominic Capone (great nephew of Al Capone), Abbott CEO Miles White, Marcelo Balboa (US Soccer Hall of Fame), Elimar Ugueto (Univision, ESPN), Steve Downes of WDRV “The Drive,” children’s book authors Ridley Pearson and Tom Watson, Top Chef Stephanie Izard, Chef Raghavan Iyer, Ty Pennington, Grammy Award winner Kurt Elling, and Archbishop Burke of The Vatican.

Tom played guitar on the HALO 2 video game soundtrack to complement guitar tracks by Steve Vai, as well as guitars on countless national commercials and for Atlantic Records