Tom Nalli's Personal Interests Page

Computers:

I like playing around with computers and surfing the internet looking for things. My e-bay user rating is now up to 242 with 100% positive feedback! Also, I just love facebook, which I was surreptitiously enrolled in by a student in 2006. My facebook page is at http://facebook.com/tnalli.

Nature:

I am a backyard birder and I like searching for wild stuff I can eat (morel mushrooms!). My wife and I like to take our Wenonah canoe on local waters such as the Root River and Lake Onalaska.

Sports:

I am a fan of several New York sports teams including the Knicks and the Jets. I live and die Syracuse Orange Basketball (or as they in Syracuse, "I bleed Orange."). Over the last couple of years I have gradually become a big Minnesota Twins fan.

Italian Food:

Being the grandson of Italian immigrants and having enjoyed many a Sunday dinner at Ma & Pa's, I believe I know good authentic Italian food when I taste it. I like cooking especially classic italian dishes like Ziti Putanesca, Spaghetti with Meatballs, Eggplant Parmesan, Baked Lasagna, etc. My wife, Joni, has finally perfected her recipe for pizza dough so we enjoy homemade pizza usually about once a week nowadays.

During our seven years in Westchester County, New York we also enjoyed going out for Italian food quite often. Unfortunately, here in the Upper Midwest, where people seem to want their pizza to always taste like it came out of the freezer at the grocery store, good Italian Restaurants are pretty much non-existent. 

Foosball:

I have a nice Tornado foosball table in our basement bar/game room. I was an avid foos player throughout college and grad school and those skills never seemed to go away. Challenge me sometime.

Music:

For many years I held a card in the musicians union as a trombone player. Most of my playing was in big bands. I played lead trombone all four years as an undergraduate in the Union Jazz Ensemble and was director of this ensemble my senior year. During my graduate studies in chemistry at the University of Rochester I was a member of the River Campus Jazz Ensemble for five years. I regularly played in Jam sessions at the Omega fraternity's magic bus parties. While at the U of R, a trombone-playing buddy of mine was Jim Leff, a professional musician of some note who mentions me as an influence on his Omega Biography page. I also played along with my brother Joe, a tenor sax man, as a member of small horn sections in a number of short lived rock bands in upstate New York.

I enjoy listening to big band music as well as all other types of jazz. I also like Italian Operas. Of course, I still like to listen to old favorites from my college days including the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Yes, Chicago, and the Grateful Dead. My youngest brother, Vince, introduced to me to Phish quite a few years ago now and Joni and I are now huge fans. We saw Paul McCartney in his most recent US Tours (2006 in St. Paul and again in Las Vegas, 2010 in Kansas City). Awesome shows. Paul is a great performer and musician and probably the greatest songwriter of the 20th century.

I started playing the trombone again in 2001 after a twelve-year hiatus, joining the La Crescent Community Summer Band that year. Over the years, I "got my name out there" and now I play with a lot of great ensembles including the Winona Brass Band, the Winona Municipal Band, the La Crosse Concert Band, Winona Cathedral Brass, "Top Brass" quintet, Saint Mary's University Jazz Ensemble, and the John Paulson Big Band. Most recently I was very excited to be asked to join local rock/funk/soul band, Section 8, and their great horn section.

I started teaching myself guitar in February 2006. It's coming pretty well and I hope to play out in public some day.

05/06 SMU Jazz Ensemble Trombone Section: Brodie Hacken, Me, Diana Connolly, and Eric Heukeshoven

08/08 Spike and the Boys with me and my brother Joe on tenor sax.