Photos by PAUL MCALPINE<\/strong> PLYMOUTH, Mass. \u2013<\/strong> Thomas Dolby\u2019s \u201cIconic 80s Recollections Tour\u201d is selling out to rave reviews and now the teacher has proven to be a successful student of a new style in music performance.<\/p>\n For the last several years, Dolby has been a professor and the head of the Peabody Conservatory\u2019s Music for New Media program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. But with his latest production, the \u201cIconic 80s Recollection Tour,\u201d the artist known for his electronic music is educating new and veteran audiences throughout the US and UK.<\/p>\n Get Dolby tour tickets here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The British-born Dolby has enjoyed a remarkable career, from performing with David Bowie, to blasting to fame in the 1980s with the iconic new wave track, \u201cShe Blinded Me With Science,\u201d all the while embracing tech opportunities and even creating the ring tones on millions of hand-held devices.<\/p>\n Dolby\u2019s recent endeavors led him to Baltimore\u2019s Johns Hopkins University, where he\u2019s been teaching, as well as learning about the true fineries of symphonic music. And he is bestowing the opportunity to learn about music for media upon others.<\/p>\n \u201cI love being a professor,\u201d Dolby told U.S. Rocker in an exclusive interview. \u201cI left school at 16 and back in those days there was no university program for the kind of degree I would have wanted. I never trained in music so I was already at a disadvantage and there was no way to learn film music.<\/p>\n \u201cI was also interested in creative writing and filmmaking,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know about Johns Hopkins as an arts school but I actually came across them via an ad saying they were building a film music program.\u201d<\/p>\n Dolby was integral to the creation of the department and helped design the recording studio on campus.<\/p>\n And his relocation to Baltimore was easy and actually quite familiar, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy wife is from New York and it was close enough to New York and as it turns out I love Baltimore,\u201d he said. \u201cI love seeing the comings and going in the port and Federal Hill and Fells Point. There are a lot of the ports in the UK like Liverpool and Bristol that look similar in architecture to where I\u201dm living now.\u201d<\/p>\n Dolby\u2019s tour opened in Plymouth, Mass. and continues through the U.S. and to Europe.<\/p>\n With this newly embraced arrangement to his performances, Dolby is able to incorporate his deep love of orchestra into his shows and says he was inspired by collaborator Andrew Lipke.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw Andrew Lipke performing a fusion show with the Baltimore Symphony,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m obsessed with symphony orchestra at the moment. I got to know Andrew and found out he was relatively local to me and he\u2019s been helping arrange the music.\u201d<\/p>\n There are other East Coast locals among the band members including Gale Ann Dorsey, who\u2019s from Philadelphia. He met her on stage with David Bowie in New York, he said.<\/p>\n Did Bowie impact Dolby\u2019s work?<\/p>\n \u201cMassively,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019d be hard presssed to find someone from my era who wasn\u2019t influenced by him. His ability to find future trends and emerging art forms was a massive influence.\u201d<\/p>\n Dolby tells stories of his work with Bowie and other stories in his memoir, \u201cThe Speed of Sound.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cSince I wrote my memoir, \u2018The Speed of Sound,\u2019 a lot of people have been have become interested in the stories,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I do \u2018meet and greets\u2019 at the show people are curious. So the storytelling became a part of my solo shows.\u201d<\/p>\n The latest show incorporates several band members who are equally enthusiastic about aspects of symphonic music. Dolby said it has been a labor of love blending his own \u2018synth-cratic\u2019 style of music with his new command of orchestra.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s new to me, it\u2019s not second nature to me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve absorbed since I\u2019ve been at the Peabody. The knobs and sliders do as they\u2019re told, they can\u2019t listen to each other there\u2019s no concsiousness. With an orchestra it\u2019s like a \u2018hive mind,\u2019 and I find that really fascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n Dolby, known for his technology endeavors and tech-influenced and futuristic tracks that made him a star in the 1980s, said he is embracing artificial intelligence and works with it. He said AI and the latest technologies enable musicians to focus on the music rather than taking time to master the tools that create a certain effect or sound.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore, a musician would make a request to an engineer,\u201d he said. \u201cNowawadays I can do all of that on my laptop. If you\u2019re not a sound engineer why should you have to do that? The way we interact with AI is in some way more intuitive. I\u2019m a fan of the new creative possibilities it opens up. If you look at my career I\u2019ve always been a \u2018glass-half-full\u2019 type.\u201d<\/p>\n And while members of the tour audience are not exactly Dolby\u2019s students, they too, are learning right along with the professor about this whole new expanse in music.<\/p>\n \u201cActually, I\u2019m workshopping the new material and I have to ask audiences to treat it with discretion,\u201d he said. \u201cThe show, you will see, is really a sneak preview of what my symphonic show will be like.\u201d<\/p>\n The Iconic 80s Tour dates:<\/strong><\/p>\n APRIL, 2026 \u2013 USA Ticket links can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n Listen to Dolby\u2019s music here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Interview by DONNA BALANCIA<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Thomas](\"https:\/\/usrockermusic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Dolby-Paul-McAlpine-2-927x610.jpg\")
![\"Gale](\"https:\/\/usrockermusic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Gale-Ann-Dorsey-with-Dolby-Paul-McAlpine-766x610.jpg\")
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21 St. Louis, MO City Winery<\/p>\n