When it came to making music in the age of COVID, Highline professor Dr. Ben Thomas had to figure out how to work from home. 

Ben Thomas released a CD titled Eternal Aporia, which has elements of tango/jazz on Jan. 21.

When it came to producing the songs, Dr. Thomas did it all within his home studio. 

“COVID made me sit down and do projects,” he said. Dr. Thomas, along with other musicians he’s worked with, produced this album together – remotely. 

“This was a pandemic recording,” he said. “It was difficult when we weren’t all in the same room.” 

The other musicians were from Washington, Idaho, and Texas. Dr. Thomas himself played multiple instruments in the songs.

With this all being in this home studio, he faced some difficulties. 

“I go to high-end studios, and I got to work with a recording engineer. What took them little time, took me a lot of time,” he said.

“I made a lot of mistakes,” Dr. Thomas said. “If I didn’t like it, I would come back the next day and redo it.”

With the struggles of producing music, recording pandemically, musicians from different states, and having to play multiple instruments, the process of producing the entire CD took five to six  months to complete. 

This album was different from past work he’s done, and shows another side of him musically. 

“I played tango music for 15 years, but never released any music of this sort,” said Dr. Thomas.

“It’s a collection of older and newer music I did,” he said. 

Within this CD, songs were composed all the way back to 15 years ago, while other songs have been up to four to five years ago. Only one song was composed specifically for this CD. 

Once it was released, Dr. Thomas said he was ecstatic. 

“Selling the first one felt great. I’ve been performing live for decades. To have it finished felt amazing,” he said.

He said this CD reaches out to a larger audience. 

“Having it recorded gave me access to an audience I didn’t have before. I had a really nice review from Denmark, who played my music,” he said.

Dr. Thomas suggested a particular way to listen to this music. 

“The first one is to listen to it physically. Dancing and tango develop together and can give that emotion to the song,” he said. “The second option is a lot of these songs have stories. Approach it as movie music, see if you can imagine a movie scene while listening.” 

He said finishing the project was exciting. 

“It’s like getting a tattoo. When you get the tattoo, after two weeks you’re already thinking ‘What’s the next one I’m going to get?’” Dr. Thomas said.

For future work, he said he is eager to get started. 

“Part of me wants to do solo pieces, another part of me also wants to do another jazz album,” he said. “I last released a jazz album in 2010. This CD was more elegant than other pieces – I would like to play jazz solos/songs and kind of go back to my roots.”