Award-winning classical and electric guitarist, Tom Clippinger has been described as “one of the finest young players I’ve heard,” and “someone to watch” (Oren Fader, guitarist and faculty at Manhattan School of Music and SUNY Purchase). As an advocate for new music, Tom frequently works with composers to expand the classical guitar repertoire, and in this process has been the dedicatee of several new works by composers such as Zach Gulaboff Davis, Celil Refik Kaya, Jose Maria Sanchez-Verdu, Quinn Mason, and Federico Bonacossa. In 2018, Tom was invited to perform at the TEDXFSU conference in Tallahassee, FL.

Tom completed his undergraduate studies at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and his Masters degree at Florida State University, where he served as a teaching assistant to esteemed pedagogue, Bruce Holzman. He has also attended Le Domaine Forget International Music Festival, The Aspen Music Festival, Brevard Institute, and Mostly Modern Festival. Additionally, Tom is a founding member of the Austin Guitar Quartet, a group dedicated to commissioning and performing new repertoire. Recently, they performed and recorded Nico Muhly’s “How Little You Are” with the Texas Guitar Quartet, and the GRAMMY Award Winning groups, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and Conspirare. The recording of this work was released in 2020 by Delos Productions, and reached #15 on the Billboard traditional classical charts in its first week, was reviewed favorably by BBC 3 Radio, featured in the January 2021 issue of Gramophone Magazine, was named a top album of 2020 by Philadelphia’s WRTI, and was named a top 10 album of 2020 by The Chicago Tribune.

Other recent performances include a concert at the International Saxophone Symposium with saxophonist, Sean Myers, the chamber oratorio “The Passion of Saint Thomas More'' by Garrett Fisher at Texas A&M University, a concert at Compositum Musicae Novae in Miami, Florida, a concert at Columbia University, and quartet concerts in partnership with Austin Classical Guitar, The Contemporary Austin, and Fast Forward Austin. Tom is currently pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was awarded the Rainwater Grant for Innovation with colleagues Evan Taucher and Dragos Ilie as a member of Ex-Aequo Artists for their project, “Changing the Canon.” He has studied with Ray Chester, Bruce Holzman, Adam Holzman, Matt Palmer, and Magnus Andersson.

Tom plays on a Glenn Canin guitar, and is an Ex-Aequo Artist, and plays Augustine Paragon Red Strings.